VSn Friday January 13, the Commercial Court of Lyon ordered the liquidation of the company Place du Marché, ex-Toupargel, the king of the delivery of frozen meals ordered by telephone. The company leaves at least one thousand six hundred employees on the floor, without great efforts by the owners of the company to alleviate their suffering. The Bahadourian brothers, owners of the successful Grand Frais chain, failed to get the former Toupargel, bought in 2020, to take the digital shift, while its rural and aging clientele was dwindling.
Such is the ruthless world of retail, where every penny counts and retaining customer loyalty is a daily struggle. Especially when inflation eats away at purchasing power. According to INSEE, food consumption has been in continuous decline for six months. We therefore understand the relentlessness of distributors to keep their customers through prices.
Since the grocer from Landerneau, Edouard Leclerc, obtained, in 1953, from the Minister of Finance at the time, Edgar Faure, who was already trying to fight against inflation, a decree prohibiting the refusal to sell, the grouping, later followed by its counterparts Intermarché or Système U, sees itself as a crusader of the purchasing power of citizens in the face of the greed of manufacturers and wholesalers of all kinds.
Powerful power relations
In 2023, the fight continues. A law is concocted in the National Assembly to support farmers and industrialists against distributors who have become powers. Extending the EGalim laws of 2018 and 2021, it intends to once again protect the margins of French producers and farmers, squeezed by the tariffs imposed by the large distributors. It also brings up the same ambiguities.
The deputies intend to protect the milk producers, when the supermarkets assure that the text will especially fatten Nestlé and Coca-Cola. Powerful balances of power that the law will not prevent from existing. Especially since the elected officials who sing the praises of small producers, bakers and SMEs are hastening in their constituencies to promote the establishment of Intermarché and E.Leclerc on the outskirts of cities, bringing jobs and low prices.
This is what political scientist Jérôme Fourquet calls the supermarket society. A France where, in fifty years, large retailers have replaced factories and churches as a place of socialization and regional development. A society where the consumer takes precedence over the producer. Going back will not be easy.