Storming back

• By CHERAMIE SONNIER
• Assistant food editor
• Published: Jul 9, 2009

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NEW ORLEANS — “The sweet taste of Louisiana” is how Frank Simoncioni wants people to think of the candies made by Aunt Sally’s Praline Shops Inc.

Simoncioni, chief executive officer, said the recipe for his company’s top seller, the Original Creole Praline, “hasn’t knowingly changed since 1935 when we think the business started.”

The sugar and pecan candy has a “delicate balance of what we call sugar burn, the sensation at the front of the tongue, and milk fat, the taste remaining on the side of your tongue, with a light hint of vanilla.”

He estimates the company uses about 180,000 pounds of sugar and 75,000 pounds of pecans to make about 2.5 million pralines each year. It produces its pralines daily and ships its products throughout the world.

Aunt Sally’s is “a private corporation with all shares still held by the original family,” who are descendants of Pierre Bagur and his wife, Diane Jacquet, who married about 1910.

Bagur family history says the couple wanted to start a business that would “find and create items that would reflect the unique cultural identity of New Orleans.”

As part of that plan, Pierre Bagur decided to develop a version of the praline he recalled buying as a child from a vendor known as “Aunt Sally,” who sold fresh pralines in his Dumaine Street neighborhood. Bagur’s praline, the Aunt Sally’s Original Creole Praline, became the icon item for their business.

Family lore says the first pralines were sold by young family members who carried praline-filled baskets to various public gatherings and at another family business called Little Pierre’s, located in the 500 block of Royal Street.

Pierre Bagur Sr. opened the first retail Aunt Sally’s store in the 1930s in one of the old French Market stalls in the 900 block of Decatur Street. The company had a variety of locations, all in the French Quarter, during its early years, Simoncioni said.

In the 1940s, the family opened its retail shop at 810 Decatur St. next door to Café Du Monde, the historic beignet and coffee shop.

By the 1990s, the company had outgrown its French Market location and expanded into a 19th-century warehouse at 2831 Chartres St. at Press Street, which currently houses its main offices, mail-order department, a climate-controlled production kitchen and inventory storage.

The expansion also led the family to elect a board of directors and hire Simoncioni, who is experienced in food marketing and candy development, as chief executive officer.

“I started with Aunt Sally’s in May 2005, four months before Hurricane Katrina,” Simoncioni said. “Aunt Sally’s was really bleak after Katrina. We dropped from 50 employees to six,” including himself.