The Opening

Paris Baguette will open its 30th Texas bakery café on October 31 in Missouri City, a suburb southwest of Houston, marking another step in the brand's push toward 1,000 North American locations by 2030. The new unit, situated at 6266 Highway 6 inside the Kroger-anchored Colony Lakes Shopping Center, adds to a domestic network that already exceeds 350 cafés and a global footprint of more than 4,000 locations.

The Operator

The café is owned and operated by Osman Ulhaq alongside Krystle Ulhaq, Vice President of Talent and Experience. Osman Ulhaq brings a cross-sector résumé spanning InterContinental Hotels, Honda and Lexus dealership leadership, senior roles at Yum! Brands, and most recently an executive vice president and chief strategy and growth officer position across three Arizona-based credit union organizations. The location has created 45 jobs, with the franchisee committing to additional hiring as the business scales. Community partnerships include No Kid Hungry and local food banks.

"Missouri City is an incredible place to build something meaningful," said Ulhaq. "We're especially proud to have hired locally, and we're committed to giving back through local food banks, No Kid Hungry, and other community organizations."

Expansion Context

The Missouri City unit illustrates the broader franchise-led growth strategy Paris Baguette has pursued across the U.S. bakery-café segment, a category that has seen sustained consumer demand for artisan breads, handcrafted cakes, and specialty coffee in neighborhood retail settings. The brand is targeting operators with backgrounds in hospitality and brand management — a profile Ulhaq fits closely — as it attempts to differentiate on service culture as much as product.

Darren Tipton, CEO of Paris Baguette, framed the opening within the company's wider mission. "We're on a mission to reestablish the neighborhood bakery café as the heart of the community across the U.S., and we're excited to see Osman bring this to life in his local trade area," Tipton said.

With Texas representing the brand's most developed state-level market at 30 units, Paris Baguette's pace in the Sun Belt mirrors patterns seen across fast-casual bakery and café concepts expanding in high-growth suburban corridors. The colony Lakes location will serve Missouri City alongside the adjacent communities of Sienna, Riverstone, Quail Valley and Lake Olympia — a combined trade area that reflects the dense, master-planned suburban growth characteristic of the greater Houston metro.

For franchisors in the bakery-café segment, the economics of Kroger-anchored strip centers offer meaningful co-tenancy traffic while keeping occupancy costs below urban flagship formats — a unit-level consideration that supports the brand's goal of reaching profitability benchmarks that can sustain rapid multi-unit development through 2030.

Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.