Profile | ‘We pay for everything’ except underwear: pastry chef Gérard Dubois on investing in his people, losing weight during Covid and taking La Rose Noire global
- Gérard Dubois, the Swiss pâtissier and entrepreneur, believes in investing in people – he provides almost everything for his factory staff in the Philippines
- He tells Andrew Sun about staying fit during Covid, supplying La Rose Noire baked goods to 57 countries and surrounding himself with smart, driven people
I studied and apprenticed as a pastry chef in Switzerland, but I had been baking at home with my mother since I was 12.
Growing up in the mountains of Villars-sur-Ollon, sports was a big part of my life. I skied a lot and played on the Swiss junior national ice hockey team for three years.
But I just loved baking.
My father was an engineer so he wondered what I was doing cooking. Luckily, my twin brother, Christian, became an engineer.
During Covid, everybody including me got bored of doing nothing. So I thought of another concept, to keep everybody busy and not fire anybody
I did my Swiss military service in the French part of Switzerland, in the mountain infantry. I moved to Zurich aged 20, then went to London after applying for a job there around 1982 and worked on the Gatwick Hilton Hotel’s opening.
After showing a lot of passion in my work, my boss then sent me to the Hilton in Istanbul and then Guam. My family asked, “Where’s that?”