French Truck Coffee opens new shop and expands food menu with a well-known NOLA chef

When a bakery on Maple Street near the Uptown universities shut down, French Truck Coffee was able to swiftly open a new location in its address. In the pastry case, and on many of the tables between the lattes and Rwandan pour over coffees, are signs of a change in the food across the French Truck brand that’s been percolating a bit longer.

French Truck now has a chef who once oversaw the exquisite desserts at Emeril’s Restaurant, competed with celebrity chefs on food shows and ran his own cute-as-pie bake shop.

That’s Jeremy Fogg, and the first phases of a menu revamp are now in place at all the French Truck locations in New Orleans and Baton Rouge (the company also has a few locations in Memphis).

That starts with pastry, a handful of savory items and the house focaccia bread. Next up, Fogg will take on the other side of the menu, the sandwiches, salads and other savory dishes served at French Truck locations equipped with their own kitchens.

“French Truck is established and known for coffee, we think it should be known for pastry and food too,” Fogg said.

Seasonal and savory

The latest French Truck location opened this week at 7638 Maple St. That corner spot was briefly home to Zoe’s Bakery, after a long run as a different bakery, Maple Street Patisserie, which once supplied French Truck with its pastries.

This is the brand’s 13th location, and as the company has grown it developed its own commissary kitchen. That’s where Fogg and his kitchen staff have been at work since the chef joined French Truck late last year.

They’ve been analyzing recipes and finding ways to elevate them and increase consistency and quality, while keeping up with demand that can call for 3,000 croissant-style laminated pastries alone in a normal week, and another 1,400 or so biscuits for the popular build-your-own breakfast sandwiches.

Fogg has also started adding seasonal pastries, to go with the cafes’ seasonal coffee drinks. Right now that’s a pistachio strawberry Danish, with crisp, rippling layers of pastry surrounding a burst of jammy fruit. Next up, Fogg is working on a lemon blueberry cruffin for summer.

Traditional almond croissants are joined in the case by savory versions, like a ham and cheese number and a jalapeño cheddar sausage croissant, a once-mainstay item for French Truck that Fogg has brought back.

Growing brand, new chef

French Truck has been growing swiftly since founder Geoffery Meeker started the company as a specialty roaster in his New Orleans home in 2011. He took a culinary approach to coffee, in sourcing beans and roasting to order, and found an initial following among local restaurants.

French Truck takes its name from the yellow Citroën delivery truck that he used to make deliveries in the early days. Today, Meeker runs the company in partnership with Bobby Winston.

Fogg was the pastry chef at Emeril’s Restaurant for six years prior to the pandemic. It was a high-profile position that brought the chef national recognition. He’s competed on the Food Network shows “Best Baker in America,” “Chopped Sweets” and “Beat Bobby Flay” (he did just that in the show’s 2018 season).

During the pandemic he tapped into his own family roots to create Mae’s Bakeshop. It started out supplying direct orders and in 2024 opened a retail location Uptown. Soon after closing the shop late last year, he joined French Truck.

The newest French Truck is next door to the original location of PJ’s Coffee, which closed in January after nearly 50 years.