Every Saturday morning, people queue down the road to get into Mon Petit Chou.
Serving a variety of sweet and savoury tarts, pies and pastries, the micro-patisserie and bakehouse opened on Aigburth Road in December. It swiftly became a firm favourite among people living both near and far.
As a result, if you want a coffee and a croissant to start your weekend, you better be prepared to wait. However, once you make your way through the queue, on the counter is an array of elegant and carefully-crafted pastries.
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Mon Petit Chou has its origins in lockdown, when Betty Morris, 30, began baking for neighbours. Soon after, the trained pastry chef turned her basement into a micro-bakery and was delivering cakes across Liverpool. The next step was to open a shop of her own.
As she and her team prepared for a lunchtime rush, Betty, from Allerton, told the ECHO about Mon Petit Chou's story.
She said: "I always baked growing up, I was the friend who always made birthday cakes for people in school and all the teachers. But then I didn't know what to do with myself, all my friends had gone to uni and I was thinking about what to do.
"I ended up going to Liverpool Community College - I did two years of professional cheffing there, the whole cookery course. Then I went to 60 Hope Street as a waitress and elbowed my way into the kitchen eventually, then I was on pastry and that was me then.
She added: "Then lockdown happened and the restaurant closed, so I started to bake cakes for neighbours and things like that.
"Then people told me to set up an Instagram page and from there it very quickly took off. I turned the whole basement of the house into a micro-bakery.
"People used to come and collect boxes of cakes from the door on Thursday and Friday each week. My friend would go round to deliver them as well."
The next step was to set up a shop. After an initial struggle to find a suitable location, Betty settled on her Aigburth Road shop, just along from Aigburth Vale.
She said: "We already had a nice customer base around here - a lot of people live nearby and there wasn't too much going on at this stretch of the road so we thought it would be nice.
"This used to be a bridal shop. She moved out of here because she needed a bigger space. She had outgrown the shop, so she moved down the road and I took this over.
"I tried to do most of the handiwork myself, with my dad, all the bits and bobs. It was a six month slog of getting it all set up."
"We opened in December. The first day we opened, I thought 'oh my god, is anyone even going to come'. We were just standing at the counter thinking 'this is scary' after you've made loads of food to sell every day."
Fortunately, the business took off. With the help of an Instagram page, its visually-appealing pastries drew plenty of people in.
As Betty said: "Then the word got round and now on a Saturday morning we have queues down the road. It's so nice."
More than 10,000 people now follow the Instagram account. The shop already has a number of regulars who come for its ever-changing range, which this week featured a roasted tomato, mozzarella and pesto filo pastry and a brie, shallot chutney and thyme savoury croissant.
Betty explained: "Every week, we try to change. There are a few staples that we always have that people love, like pain au chocolat, Basque cheesecake. Other than those, we change all the savoury and sweet options - different tarts. We have a little meeting at the beginning of the week and think about what we want to make and what flavours we are thinking about."
She added: "I'm very much into making everything look pretty anyway. That's part of eating, but I also love taking photos.
"So I really enjoy doing that side of it, it's a different creative element, curating the counter and then taking nice pictures and making sure they're shown on Instagram, so it's all cohesive."
The bakery is only open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The rest of the week is spent planning, preparing and ensuring the finished products are as good as they can be.
Looking to the future, Betty wants to be in a position to open the shop on more days. She also has her eyes on a second venue. The compact Aigburth Road setting can make preparing enough food to keep up with demand a task, but it is one she relishes.
She said: "On a Saturday, I get my brothers in to help and do the dishes. We're looking around thinking 'this is crazy', there are eight of us behind the counter.
"There are more people behind the counter than in the shop. It takes that many people to keep it running though, with all the stuff that goes on every day."
For now, she is happy to have become part of the community in Aigburth.
She said: "I always wanted to do something for myself. It's nice to have made a little shop - it feels like a little home.
"We've only been open since December but there are so many people who we know really well already, they come in all the time for a chat. It feels like we're part of the community already."
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