During its first full season in 2024, nearly 15,000 guests visited La Laiterie, a rustic former milkhouse turned café and bistro in Machias. At its helm was 37-year-old Chef Ross Florance, whose days began at 4:30 a.m., crafting nearly 900 pastries. On Friday evenings, the tempo shifted: Florance hosted 12 guests for an intimate eight-course dinner with wine pairings, accompanied by a single server. By dawn, he was back in the café, welcoming weekend crowds. Florance, who relocated to Maine from New York City in 2021, was enchanted by the bucolic charm of the eighth-generation family farm where La Laiterie began. The café’s marble-topped bistro tables, ceiling festooned with dried flowers, and sweeping views of Little Kennebec Bay created a dreamlike setting. Apple trees and farm fields framed a space that seemed lifted from a postcard. On Sundays, Florance hosted a farmers market showcasing local treasures like Josh Pond cheeses, oysters, pork, and fresh produce.
Yet the magic of the farm came with challenges. The café’s modest kitchen meant much of the prep work occurred in a farmhouse across the street. As summer faded into fall, the unheated milkhouse posed risks to expensive equipment like Florance’s prized La Marzocco espresso machine. “Once the temperatures dropped, we had to close for the season,” he says. To sustain La Laiterie, he needed a more practical space that could accommodate the café’s growing popularity.
“It [the farm space] was never a long-term strategy,” Florance explains. “It was more like, ‘Let’s get it set up and see what happens.’ But it was so popular, it forced my hand. If we’re going to be just as busy or busier next season, this space isn’t going to hold up. I needed to make the business more sustainable for me.”
Before opening La Laiterie, Florance sharpened his skills in some of the world’s most celebrated kitchens, from Napa Valley to Denmark, Spain, and France. He later served as an executive chef for a financial firm in New York City, where he hosted pop-up dinners that developed his culinary voice: simple, seasonal dishes with a twist. These experiences also honed his business acumen, teaching him how to craft memorable dining experiences that would bring guests back time and again.
The pandemic prompted Florance to leave New York for his second home in Roque Bluffs. There, he began imagining a business that would combine his passions: community-building, baking, and intimate dining. A friend introduced him to Ben Edwards, managing partner of Schoppee Farm in Machias, who had a vacant milkhouse. Florance, with his father’s help, transformed the space into La Laiterie.
The café debuted with a soft launch in 2023, offering specialty coffee brewed with beans from Portland’s Tandem Coffee Roasters, house-baked breads, and French-inspired pastries, including croissants, pain au chocolat, financiers, and the buttery, caramelized delicacy known as kouign amann.
As the café gained traction, Florance introduced Flora, a Friday night bistro. Guests enjoyed eight-course dinners that began with his own sparkling cider served in champagne flutes and Beals Island oysters nestled on sea salt and served atop his grandmother’s china. Plates often featured seasonal luxuries like creamy tuna tartare with shaved cucumber, Belgian caviar with creamed corn, and sourdough bread crowned with Peekytoe crab, brown butter, and nori. Desserts might include Josh Pond’s Meddybemps cheese paired with kouign amann or almond cake topped with amaro cream and birch syrup tapped from Florance’s own trees.
Yet even as the bistro flourished, Florance faced the limits of his space and stamina. “I was just trying to survive,” he admits. Regularly selling out of breads and pastries, he began dreaming of an expanded space and staff.
Florance is now seeking a new location close to home with more visibility and room to grow. He envisions a café open five days a week, serving an expanded menu that might include quiche, crêpes, savory pastries, and even lunch options like moules-frites or pâtés. He’s also contemplating a second Friday dinner seating to meet demand—last summer, the waitlist swelled to 50 people.
One non-negotiable? Continuing the popular Sunday farmers market. “The market not only brings better, healthier food to the area, but it also supports farmers and makes people’s lives better,” he says. “It’s always going to be part of what I want to do—not just for the business, but for the community.”
Though leaving the idyllic farm setting is bittersweet, Florance is confident that the ambiance he creates, and the feelings his food evokes, will draw people in. “Everything is on the table for inspiration,” he says. “Whatever I feel is fun and worth the effort will keep me going—and I hope people will follow.”
