Photo: Arianna Tettamanzi, via The Avid Pen
Elisa Marshall was about 12 when she learned that a Spice Girl doll could sell on eBay for far more than it cost. Years later, an editor from O, The Oprah Magazine walked into a Maman event, tried a cookie and asked whether the cafe shipped nationwide. Marshall said yes, even though she had never shipped a cookie in her life. That one yes helped land Maman on Oprah's Favorite Things in 2017 and turned a small New York cafe into a national name. Today, she says, Maman has more than 60 locations.
In this episode of Starting Small, Marshall, Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Maman, walks through the full story: a Toronto-suburb childhood, an eBay business at 12, five jobs at once, a SoHo cafe funded by family and friends, and the PR, partnerships and lease-signing spree that built the brand.
This is the full Elisa Marshall founder story, and the origin of Maman, as she told it on the show.
Listen to the full episode: Starting Small on Apple Podcasts: Maman with Elisa Marshall · Listen on Podbean
Key takeaways from Elisa Marshall
Her first business was on eBay. Marshall started around age 11 or 12, selling Spice Girl merchandise bought in Canada, which she says was a test market for items that were no longer available in the U.S.
Maman started as a place she and her husband wanted to exist. They could not find a warm, welcoming cafe in New York in 2014, so they built one.
Early PR mattered. Maman invested in PR very early, and an early write-up calling its chocolate chip cookie the best in town sent lines around the block.
"Yes" opened doors. Saying yes to an editor's shipping question led to Oprah's Favorite Things and national e-commerce.
2020 was a growth moment. Maman signed 14 leases during COVID, going from five locations to many more.
Her advice: say more yes.
Growing up in Unionville, Ontario
Marshall grew up in Unionville, a small town north of Toronto, and calls her childhood magical. Her father was an entrepreneur and antique dealer who got into many different industries, and she credits him with instilling her entrepreneurial streak. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom with her own entrepreneurial spirit: in Marshall's teens she started a home chef business, cooking dinners and pre-packaged lunches for neighborhood families. Marshall saw how her mother turned a domestic skill into a business.
Marshall loved baking, cooking and entertaining. Her parents entertained constantly, and she handled the table settings and flowers.
The Spice Girl eBay business
Marshall says she started an eBay business, maybe around 1998 when eBay was new, under her father's supervision. At 11 or 12, obsessed with the Spice Girls, she got several of the dolls for her birthday. Her father, a collector who sold a lot on eBay, suggested listing one. It was maybe a $20 doll; it drew something like 30 bids and sold for about $85, which neither of them understood at the time.
Her father did some research and found that Canada was a test market for a lot of Spice Girl merchandise, with items arriving from the U.K. that were no longer available in the U.S. So they bought up everything: bubblegum, lollipops, plastic rings, stickers. Rings that cost her a dollar each at a local dollar store sold for $60 U.S. Marshall describes flipping items at 10 to 20 times what she paid, and making thousands of dollars at 12, delivered by mail. It ended when the merchandise became available in the U.S., but she calls the Spice Girls her foot in the door to an entrepreneurial career.
Five jobs at once
Marshall studied fashion design, which quickly shifted into fashion business, then marketing and business. In her early twenties, she realized she was less interested in designing clothes than in the marketing, branding, PR and events around fashion. She held a nine-to-five in fashion PR. On evenings and weekends she ran a baking and catering company (cupcakes were having a moment), did wedding planning, interned with a wedding planner and dabbled in interior design.
She ended up with five jobs, not giving a hundred percent to any, but loving all of them. Her conclusion was that she needed a world that combined all her passions under one roof, which led to Maman.
The second-date cafe
Marshall says the idea was "really selfish": she and Ben were filling a void they felt. On their second date, Ben was a corporate lawyer, and she told him she wanted to open a cafe that did collaborations with brands, doubled as a space for small, intimate events, and included a flower shop, all beautifully designed. She says she described essentially what Maman is today.
Ben grew up in the hospitality industry, then went into law, and was creative and bored in his job. In 2014, they were living in New York without a place to entertain, hardly a kitchen, let alone a dining table. Everything in the city felt cold and industrial. They wanted a warm, homey place to gather with friends and family.
Finding the SoHo space
The first location is in SoHo, on Centre Street between Grand and Broome. Marshall and Ben were working with a restaurant group that owned a nearby wine bar, and they became friends with the landlord. Over a glass of wine one day, she shared her vision and he told her to walk around the block and tell him if she saw anything she liked. The next day she found a space with original tin walls, exposed brick and original wood floors. Her father's work as an antique dealer had given her an appreciation for beautiful old things, and when the lease came up, the landlord said they would make it happen.
It took about eight months from deciding to opening, she says. The biggest build-out was the kitchen, plus plumbing and electrical. "We screwed it all up," Marshall says; they had no idea what they were doing, and the team redid that location in the past year because the layout, logistics and electrical were all wrong. Going back to fix the original, she says, was fun.
Bootstrapping the first five locations
Marshall says she and her husband put in all their savings. Their parents, siblings and close family friends contributed money and labor: friends visiting from out of town painted frames and sanded tables, and her parents did most of the construction work and painted the walls. It was a huge risk to their personal and their families' finances, so they stayed scrappy.
The cafe did well right away, and they were able to self-fund the first five locations. After that, they decided to raise money rather than sit tight, since, as she puts it, they were opportunistic and always wanted more.
From to-go to a place people stay
The second location came a bit over a year later, driven by demand. Maman was turning down events because the back room in SoHo seated only 18 people, while customers wanted spaces for 30 or 40. Marshall also realized they had planned a to-go cafe but created a space so comfortable that people wanted to stay, so the business shifted toward brunch and sit-down service and needed bigger spaces with more tables.
That second location is in Tribeca, on West Broadway. Marshall and Ben lived in Tribeca, worked in SoHo and walked down West Broadway every day. The space had been a wine bar with exposed brick, big ceilings, bookshelves and skylights. One day they saw a realtor hanging a for-rent sign and jumped on it.
What Maman is
Asked to explain Maman, Marshall calls it a home away from home: a warm, welcoming environment with careful attention to detail, from the aesthetics to the cups. The food is a fusion of French technique and North American cuisine, including comfort-food dishes from their parents, dishes her husband grew up with in France, and traditional French dishes with an American twist and vice versa.
Three PR milestones
Marshall says three PR milestones stand out. The first was starting PR early: Maman invested in PR very early, working with Krupa Consulting, which it still uses, and she says the first media visits came around a month before opening. At the time, she says, they were two unknowns competing with celebrity chefs. The PR firm arranged early media visits. One led to a Grub Street article saying Maman had the best chocolate chip cookie in town, and other publications picked it up in the first week. Lines formed around the block, the cafe sold out of cookies, and some customers who had driven an hour were disappointed. She notes this was the pre-Instagram era of traditional press.
The second was getting on Oprah's Favorite Things, which she attributes to saying yes. At an event in Tribeca with another brand, the editor of O Magazine tried the cookie and asked whether Maman shipped nationwide. Marshall said yes, thinking "fake it till you make it." The moment the editor left, she says, she realized she needed to figure out how to ship cookies overnight across the country. A quick committee of friends all over the U.S. served as cookie testers and shippers, and the team mastered the shipping, packing, baking and timing, then launched an online store. That landed Maman on Oprah's Favorite Things of 2017, which she calls huge from a business standpoint, because it took Maman from a small New York shop to a nationally known brand.
The commissary model and a happy accident
Around 2017, Marshall says, Maman was primarily a New York business with five locations, and she never imagined growing it nationally. Because Tribeca's kitchen was small, the team prepped in SoHo, and she sometimes carried containers of chopped tomato, avocado and onion to Tribeca by hand. Greenpoint, the third location, had a much bigger kitchen, so production moved there and Maman fell into a commissary model: one big kitchen supporting catering, events and staffing. The NoMad location came by chance, a closed restaurant the team rented for a few months to bake and pack holiday orders, then kept. Many locations, she says, came from being opportunistic and saying yes.
2020: pivot, cookbook and 14 leases
Marshall calls 2020 scary and interesting. Maman had just finished a roadshow to raise money when the world shut down. She says the team pivoted to e-commerce, shipping nationwide, supported by great kitchen facilities and what they had learned from Oprah. She had just had her first son, and, stuck at home with a baby, she and Ben wrote Maman: The Cookbook, shrinking restaurant-scale recipes into home recipes.
Having just raised money from private equity, they planned to expand. Her husband leads much of the development and real estate side. Landlords were desperate and many locations were closing, and she says they knew the world would come back. Maman signed 14 leases during COVID, going from five locations to adding 14, with some landlords handing over keys with food still in the fridge. Many were second-generation spaces, with plumbing, electrical and often the look already in place, so they could be turned around in about six months.
By the end of 2021, she says, she and Ben realized they had to learn to open restaurants quickly and build a team, because rent was starting and landlords were no longer flexible. They hired aggressively and retrained themselves on opening a lot of locations fast. She says it was important to surround herself and Ben with passionate people better than them at what they do, and that some employees have been there since day one, including the person she interviewed before Maman existed, when she was "selling it on a piece of paper."
Martha Stewart and the menu collaboration
She calls the Martha Stewart partnership her third milestone and personal favorite. Stewart was a huge inspiration growing up, and Marshall says working with her is the biggest honor. She says she makes sure collaborations fit the brand and its customers, and has turned down some with big checks that would not have felt authentic. For Maman, collaboration is about sharing an audience.
The partnership brings some of Stewart's recipes to Maman menus, with a Maman twist using ingredients the cafes already have. Marshall notes that Stewart has more than a hundred books but little chance to put her food in front of everyday customers, so the collaboration works both ways. It has been well received by customers and has opened doors to Stewart's audience.
The future: a lifestyle brand
Marshall had just come from a Martha Stewart summit where Stewart's brand story, from a single catering company to a huge lifestyle brand, was discussed, and she sees the same arc for Maman. She and her mother created the brand knowing it would not be only brick and mortar, and she is working to turn it into a lifestyle brand that goes beyond the cafe experience and into the home. She already has a baby collection. A grocery presence, a tabletop line, and a Maison Maman with hotels are on her wish list.
Elisa Marshall's advice for founders
Her favorite advice is to say more yes. People are scared of new opportunities, scared to put themselves out there, to change jobs, to ship cookies, or to meet someone for coffee that could lead to a partnership with Martha Stewart. Being open and looking for a positive outcome is her best advice: "Negative people won't go very far," she says, and constantly saying no can shut down a world of opportunity.
Frequently asked questions about Elisa Marshall and Maman
Who is Elisa Marshall?
Elisa Marshall is the founder and chief brand officer of Maman. She grew up in Unionville, Ontario, started an eBay business at around 12, and opened the first Maman in SoHo in 2014 with her husband, Ben.
What is Maman?
According to Marshall, a cafe and brand she describes as a home away from home, serving a fusion of French technique and North American cuisine, now with more than 60 locations.
How was Maman funded at first?
Marshall says the first locations were bootstrapped with the couple's savings and money and labor from family and friends, and Maman raised outside money after about its fifth location.
How did Maman get on Oprah's Favorite Things?
She says an editor from O Magazine tried the cookie at an event, asked if Maman shipped nationwide, and Marshall said yes. The team figured out shipping, and Maman appeared on Oprah's Favorite Things in 2017.
Listen to the full conversation
Hear Elisa Marshall tell the Maman story in her own words on Starting Small on Apple Podcasts or Podbean, and learn more at mamannyc.com. The Starting Small Summit returns February 17, 2027, at the Everest-Rohrer Auditorium in Mishawaka.
