ABOUT US
Bienvenido! Welcome! Bienvenue!
We are Lucía Patisserie, a small neighborhood bakery in Miramar, Puerto Rico. We serve our community classic French inspired baked goods while showcasing local products and flavors. Lucía Merino and Johan Villafañe founded Lucía Patisserie five years ago. It’s a classic love story, really… Two people obsessed with pastries: one loves to make them and the other one loves to eat them. 😋
Our Story
Lucía is a thoroughly trained Pastry Chef with over seventeen years of experience in the culinary industry. She studied Baking & Pastry Arts and Food & Beverage Management at Johnson and Wales University. Her diverse industry background ranges from working in catering operations where she was illegally underpaid for deveining endless buckets of shrimp and peeling mountains of potatoes, to developing dessert menus for private restaurants, and even overseeing pastry teams at The Ritz Carlton Hotel, The St. Regis Resort in Bal Harbour and The Fontainebleau Hotel. Johan also worked many years in the industry, both front and back of the house, and together they dreamed of opening their own bake shop. They moved around in search of new work opportunities and experiences that helped shape their vision for the neighborhood place they would one day build. After living and working in Miami, Madrid, Barcelona, and Dallas, they longed to return home and get to work on their own venture.
To make their bakery dream a reality while strapped for cash, Lucía and Johan launched a Kickstarter campaign where loving friends, family and OG fans contributed to fund their new lease and basic kitchen equipment. They spent long months fixing up the space while supplying special orders, and were finally able to open their doors in late 2017, after Hurricane María had wreaked havoc over the island of Puerto Rico. The timing was far from perfect, but they felt honored to had been able to serve their community during that extremely difficult and emotional time. Five years later, they have expanded the original hole in the wall, they’re blessed with a kickass team of young, passionate professionals, and they keep pushing themselves to find new tasty ways to keep their hungry community satisfied.
Lucía and Johan have been together for twelve years. When they’re not stretching endless yards of laminated croix dough or going over the weekly menu and purchase orders, Lucía and Johan love to travel. Going on road trips around the island on their days off is their favorite pastime. Twice a year, Lucía Patisserie closes for a couple of weeks so that the entire team can enjoy some much-needed R&R.
We hope you enjoy our freshly baked goods, hot local coffee, and friendly service. Make sure to follow us on social media to stay up to date with our specialty items, menu, fun times with the team, and even our adventures abroad.
Our new dream, and the mission for Lucía Patisserie, is to continue serving you the highest quality products for years to come while providing good work opportunities and living wages to the incredible team that makes all of this possible every single day, and continuously improving our efforts to make our operation more environmentally friendly.
