News
What's in a name?
What’s in a name? I know you’ve heard the phrase “What’s in a name?” Well it’s a lot more than I thought when we first named our business 43 years ago. Chocolate truffles were a delicious new idea in 1983 and as hip and current as we thought we were in our new venture, so we decided to name our fledging business “Truffles”. Brilliant, hip and unregistered. A month didn’t go by after getting our business cards and a checking account with our name printed across the top, that we received an official looking cease and desist letter from an attorney informing us that his wife had already registered that name with the state of Ohio. It was the name of her catering company. We needed to come up with a new name or else. Who knew it mattered? We sure didn’t. Uh-oh. It was the beginning of our long applied philosophy put into practice “ Live and Learn. “ So we got busy making up hundreds of names that seemed interesting, easy to remember or romantic that would reflect what we thought we would be. It had to have an air of the European since most of our recipes were classically inspired from French pastries and tortes. It had to be easy to remember and lastly it had to evoke a sense of fun and joy. That is what we always thought the final part of every meal should be, a petite or grand memory to celebrate something. Bill Butler, my husband at the time, often frequented the downtown library. He decided to look into the names of bakeries outside the United States to get our creative juices flowing. As I recall, he checked out bakery names in the yellow pages of Australian telephone books. First I didn’t realize the library would have such things and secondly, I decided that had to be far enough not to ignite litigation. BAM ! Before long he brought home a list of interesting bakery names from Australia , one being the BONBONIERE. We jumped on the way it looked and sounded , but also wanted to be sure to make it our own. BON . My high school French had taught me that BON meant good and everyone knew what a BONBON was. The first half was finished . Finally, the IERE could be slightly cumbersome to the American tongue . ERIE was easier for most people to say . So BONBONERIE was born, registered and became ours. Thank You Bill for loving the library and helping us make a permanently lovable and usable name for everything we made.
Sharon Butler
Co-Founder