Bouchard's Pasta
Jenny Miller, Second Generation Owner of Bouchard’s Pasta
Bouchard’s Pasta has been a staple at Findlay Market for nearly 20 years. From the jump, it was a family-owned business, and owner, Jenny Miller, hopes it remains in the family for years to come. “It’s a true family business and I’d like to see it stay that way. I don’t want to lose that,” she says.
Jenny’s mother started baking and selling Italian desserts on the North side of Findlay Market in 2007. She was working at Macy’s back then and wasn’t feeling fulfilled. “She’d bake at home on Fridays, and come here on Saturday,” Jenny says. “Shortly after that, they offered her a space inside where Dojo Gelato is now. We didn’t really have much, but we made it work.”
Jenny’s daughter was a newborn when Bouchard’s first moved into the Market House. “We brought the baby swing [to the Market], and she would swing and get passed around all day long. And now she works on Sundays, and she's about to turn 17! She's our market baby,” she says.
Siblings, children, and dear friends have collectively carried on the legacy of Bouchard’s, and Jenny hopes that trend will continue into the business’s third decade. The space is quite sentimental to her, and it’s important to Jenny to be a good steward of the space and grow the business sustainably so that it can be passed off to her children if they decide to follow in her footsteps. “The goal is for my son, who makes the pasta now, to take over. I want to make sure that I don’t leave it a mess for them to clean up,” she says.
Jenny has been working toward becoming the owner of Bouchard’s for the better part of ten years, finally tying up all the loose ends in November of 2024. As she’s settled into her role leading the business, she’s been giving her stand a refresh after more than a decade. “One week rolled into the next, and then years went by. There’s been growth, but not much change,” Jenny says. “Everything is changing around us—inside the market and out—and we’ve kind of just stayed the same.”
Jenny and her partner have been tackling a list of construction projects and space improvements for a while now with hopes to make Bouchard’s space more inviting for customers and more efficient for employees. Occasionally on Saturdays, they would sit and watch customers interact with their stand, noting how easy it was for them to see the product, and interact with employees, and use that data to inform their next space renovation.
As they work through their list of repairs and updates, one thing in particular has guided them in all of their decision making. They want to retain the integrity of the Findlay Market feel. Beyond providing their guests excellent service and high quality products, Jenny wants Bouchard’s to look and feel like a family-owned Italian grocery inside a historic market.
Jenny and her family have Italian and French roots, but grew up in West Virginia. That’s where the name comes from. Bouchard is a French name married into an Italian family. “A lot of people are confused, like, ‘Bouchard is French, and you sell pasta.’ It’s a family name. Italian grandmother married a French Canadian, and that’s where Bouchard’s came from.”
As she looks ahead to the future of the business, Jenny is looking to focus more on pasta and the savory side of their menu. As they continue to improve their space, Jenny says they’ll likely get a pasta extruder at some point to increase the variety of pasta shapes they can create in house. Having the pasta machine in their space is integral to the customer experience. “We’ve had so many conversations and interactions with both kids and adults. Just being able to see it, being able to touch it. I felt like it was pretty impactful,” she says. “I want people to know us for our pasta.”
Published September 2025