Feel Good Friday: Matines Cafe

Nestled in the Chestnut Hill, among the coffee shops and boutiques sits a café that's filled with the atmosphere of Paris. The walls are covered in artwork inspired by French motifs, there's a case filled with pastries and breads that look like they belong in a "Madeline" book, and the smell of coffee permeates the air alongside the chatter of conversation.

People have talked about Matines Cafe as a great spot to try if you're looking for a quality brunch place to relax and enjoy great food. It bills itself as a Parisian-style bistro and it lives up to that in many ways, but it has a story behind it that starts in Paris and finds its way to the states by virtue of a family visit before ultimately ending up in Chestnut Hill.

But first, let's start with the feel good elements.

There's much to talk about when it comes to the feel good elements Matines possesses: it's situated in a picturesque neighborhood on the outskirts of Philadelphia, has a bunch of great pastries on hand to enjoy, and offers great coffee and hot meals for anyone interested in something more substantial for breakfast or lunch. Warm food in an inviting space is often enough for anyone to start feeling a bit better about the world because of the sense of comfort it helps to cultivate.

However, Matines goes a step further by incorporating European art and decor around its interior, helping to create a sense that the shop is more than your standard coffee fare; it instead relies on French recipes and methods to prepare its offerings, giving an authentic feel to everything customers can try, even as the staff develop creative offerings to explore during the holidays and changing seasons.

Plus, they host a market stocked with European goods, so you can bring a little taste of Matines home with you if desired.

Matines was founded by Amanda and Arthur de Bruc, a couple from that immigrated from France in 2014. Neither had experience with running a restaurant -- she has a master's while his experience is primarily in sales -- but when they moved to Florida, they had an opportunity to visit Amanda's sister in St. Petersburg, where she had opened a French café, they got a taste of what it took and fell in love.

Shortly after that, Amanda's brother came to help too with the café, adding restaurant business expertise to the mix, and the cafe took off. Then, in 2015, Amanda and Arthur struck out on their own, opening their own café in Savannah Georgia, replicating the atmosphere of French cafés and bistros combined with notes of southern hospitality.

The effort had always relied heavily on their familial knowledge, with recipes coming from French staples, their parents, or their siblings, but they also tapped into the expertise of the communities around them to help run things effectively. Which is why, when they decided to move to Chestnut Hill in 2021, they knew they were going to be able to create something special.

There's obviously a ton of growth potential in a business that's pursued as a family; organizations that start this way can share ideas, leverage different perspectives to deliver creative solutions to problems, and tap into a shared sense of identity to work more cohesively as a team. There's also a risk that everything will blow up as people rely on personal relations to shield them from professional consequences.

However, what the de Brucs were able to accomplish relied on a deeper well of resources than a network of family connections and knowledge; they weren't afraid to learn when they didn't know something, relied on their experts to share their knowledge, and were able to lean into their strengths far better than many business owners.

Many organizations today want experts as employees; if you haven't had experience within the specific subdomain of knowledge, then you're frequently dismissed as unqualified.

But what the de Bruc's demonstrate is that, even when you don't have any experience with a specific industry, you can still be successful if you know what you don't know. Learning as you go allows you to keep your mind open to new ways of doing things because you're not caught in the trap of emulating how things should be, but instead are working out what works in your specific case, and often that leads to far better innovations than adhering to tradition.

Part of the fun of taking on a student's perspective while in business is recognizing that there are people who have knowledge and experience you don't, and you're more willing to defer to them when the time is appropriate.

The de Brucs may have had the benefit of thinking outside the box as relative novices in the area of day-to-day café operations, they were savvy enough to leverage the strengths of their team members to ensure everything got done properly, freeing them up to think about more strategic concerns of the business.

It doesn't always take an expert to do a job, but when your team has strengths that can benefit the business, it's a quick way to scale when you actually lean into them.

So, the de Bruc's both embraced the growth mindset philosophy and learned to delegate to trusted individuals based on the strengths they had, but when it comes to management, Matines benefited from leaders who knew their own strengths and played into them.

What's often overlooked in management discussions is the fact that having knowledge about many things is its own unique strength because you can then recognize when to get out of your own way. The de Bruc's knew how to run a café -- they helped launch and run two -- but they recognized when they moved to Chestnut Hill that they wanted to stay more on the business side of things so they could leverage a business education and sales experience to grow the organization. They weren't able to do that in Savannah because they were bogged down in the day-to-day tasks of keeping the lights on, but by the time they opened Matines, they figured out that the real value they could provide the business was in handling the strategic business processes that help make experiences like the café offers possible.

Matines Cafe is a unique gem that Philadelphia's star-studded food scene offers for brunch lovers, and its story makes it all the more intriguing. Wrapped up in the history behind the cafe is a story of risk, innovation, and a willingness to learn that often gets overlooked when discussing business because it’s a whole lot less interesting than disrupting competitors in many business-minded communities.

For those who are willing to see business as an exploratory experience, though, Matines Cafe may offer a spark of inspiration that business leaders don’t necessarily need to have everything figured out. Despite starting from no experience in the restaurant industry, the de Brucs built three separate cafes from scratch and relatively recently opened a new location in Wayne, PA. They brought tons of knowledge about managing and driving sales for business generally, but became experts at owning and operating cafes through a combination of leaning on people they could trust, being a learn-it-all rather than a know-it-all, and ensuring they capitalized on the experience they did have when the situation called for it.

But if you are just interested in finding a place to enjoy a Sunday morning meal, then they have a phenomenal offering of tartines and sandwiches. Personally, the Lafayette is a unique take on a turkey sandwich that’s hard to pass up.