A new Paris Baguette café opened Thursday at 5139 Raglan St. in Hilliard, Ohio, marking the South Korean bakery chain's seventh location in the state and the first venture into food service for a father-daughter pair who built the business together. Ravi Allipuram, who spent 26 years working in technology, launched the café alongside his daughter Svanika Allipuram shortly after her college graduation, turning a childhood fascination with baking into a full-fledged storefront.
As reported by RestaurantNews.com, the pair formed a family-owned Paris Baguette business with the goal of serving both the Hilliard and Dublin communities. Ravi Allipuram said Paris Baguette was the right fit for his family, and the two operators have said they plan to create a place where local families can gather and feel at home. Svanika Allipuram's interest in baking reportedly traces back to childhood bake sales, an early spark that eventually led her father to pursue franchise ownership after decades in tech.
A Growth Corridor Between Two Suburbs
The new café sits inside Lawrence Square, a mixed-use development that blends residential units with ground-floor retail on the boundary between Hilliard and Dublin near Riggins Road, according to 614NOW. That placement gives the bakery a dual-demographic pull, drawing customers from both suburbs rather than anchoring itself to a single town center. The location becomes the brand's seventh café in Ohio, following earlier debuts that included the chain's original Central Ohio entry at Easton Town Center back in mid-2024, per a WCMH report relayed on Reddit.
Paris Baguette's own corporate store locator now lists four Central Ohio locations — Easton Town Center, Upper Arlington, Polaris, and Hilliard — plus a Northern Ohio outpost in Avon. The Ohio expansion traces back to a broader push detailed in that same Reddit-relayed WCMH account, which noted the chain originally recruited nine prospective franchisees statewide, with four operator groups specifically targeting the greater Columbus metro area. Hilliard's opening appears to be one of the results of that early recruitment drive.
French Technique Meets Korean Fusion
Paris Baguette serves fresh baked goods and artisan coffee beverages, but its menu leans into a distinctive blend of styles. 614NOW's reporting describes a lineup that combines French baking techniques with South Korean fusion flavors, including items like strawberry soft cream cakes, mochi doughnuts, and savory hash brown bread. Paris Baguette Chief Executive Officer Darren Tipton said Ravi and Svanika will bring the brand's neighborhood bakery café mission to their local trade area, framing the Hilliard store as part of the company's broader strategy of expanding through partnerships with local entrepreneurs.
The brand also includes Love Baked In charitable programs and initiatives as part of its community-facing identity, according to the RestaurantNews.com account of the opening. Hoodline's own reporting on a separate Paris Baguette debut, the Coral Springs launch, detailed how these cafés depend on overnight teams of six to eight bakers who start shifts at midnight to prepare roughly 100 fresh pastry, cake, and bread items before doors open around 6 a.m. — a labor-intensive rhythm underpinning every new storefront in the chain, including Hilliard's.
A Global Bakery Empire Behind the Local Storefront
The Hilliard opening is a small piece of a much larger corporate ambition. Paris Baguette has a projected 1,000 bakery cafés across North America by 2030, and parent conglomerate SPC Group has backed that goal with serious infrastructure spending. According to The Korea Herald, SPC Group invested $160 million to build a 150,000-square-meter manufacturing plant in Burleson, Texas, designed to produce up to 500 million products annually for North American stores by the same 2030 target, with completion slated for 2027.
That North American push sits within an even broader global rollout. SPC Group expanded Paris Baguette to 700 international locations outside South Korea across 15 countries as of December 2025, according to a PR Newswire release, with the 700th store opening in London and the company pursuing an overarching target of 12,000 global stores by 2030. Franchise documentation from Paris Baguette Franchise US shows why operators like the Allipurams find the model attractive: franchised U.S. cafés generated an average annual unit sales volume of $2,861,550 in 2024, though initial setup investments range from $727,440 to $1,825,100 on top of a $50,000 initial franchise fee.
For Hilliard and Dublin residents, the arrival translates into a new neighborhood option built on that global infrastructure but run by local hands. Paris Baguette operates through a network of franchisee relationships nationwide, and the Allipuram family's café now joins that growing roster as the chain continues threading itself into suburban growth corridors across Central Ohio.
