Bon Marché provides a cozy charming cafe space with a soft and calming color scheme. It is a perfect spot to read a favorite book over a cup of coffee, or try one of their various pasta dishes. Bon Marché attracts a lot of regular local customers and the pâtissier behind this popularity is Kozo Fujii. “Contributing to the restaurant’s success is my happiness,” Kozo says with a broad smile.

Kozo Fujii was born and raised on a small island in rural Niigata prefecture. When he completed his courses at a culinary school, he started working at a light meal eatery. Although Kozo originally wanted to hone his skills at a Chinese restaurant, he kept a positive attitude in the avenue open to him. “We were experiencing a recession at the time and many companies went out of business. But the overall mood among people was generally very positive,” Kozo says. His forward-thinking positive attitude is something he has carried with himself ever since. At this light meal eatery, however, creative thinking was not required. Days and weeks went by while preparing the same spaghetti dishes and sandwiches. It was not until he left this place that Kozo became heavily involved in the pastry industry. Kozo began working at a pastry shop where sweet aromas filled the air. But Kozo was not even allowed to touch any ingredients. The boss was a rather mean guy who always said harsh things to Kozo without teaching him anything useful. So Kozo asked to be transferred to the affiliated factory that made the cakes for the pastry shop. Kozo’s wish was granted but, a few days later, his boss also followed him to the factory. Thus Kozo ended up working under the same old boss at his new workplace. Despite an initial personality conflict between Kozo and the boss, however, they gradually began to understand each other. Kozo and his boss eventually developed a very close camaraderie.

In 1977, Kozo was asked if he was interested in going to the United States. Kozo’s friend knew someone who was going to open a sophisticated Japanese style pastry shop, and was looking for a pâtissier. Kozo took the job and came to this country. But, especially back then, the majority of American people loved extra sweet rich and heavy European style cakes. The fluffy sponge cakes with mildly sweet whipped cream Japanese people like, therefore, were not well received in the beginning. Kozo and others did not abandon hope. They stuck with their tastes uncompromisingly because they were convinced that one day their cakes would be “a big hit.” It did take quite some time but their pastries finally caught on.

After working eight years at this pastry shop, Kozo started his own bakery business. Kozo opened a specialty store focusing on cakes, Danish pastries, and cookies. It attracted many customers, Japanese and non-Japanese alike. Kozo was afraid of getting into too much of a routine, so he kept on trying out new creations with innovative designs as well as learning constantly from books on pastry. But this specialty store unfortunately closed down in 2006, much to its many fans’ regret.