French bakers in pain over cut-price supermarket baguettes

French bakers have taken aim at a major supermarket chain that is offering inflation-busting low prices for baguettes, saying the move will undermine competition in one of the country’s prized industries.

Customers in Leclerc stores were greeted with the new baguette price — 29 cents (24p). That is 10 cents cheaper than Leclerc competitors Intermarché and Super U, and 16 cents less than at Carrefour stores. Meanwhile, the average baguette price in France is 90 cents.

Bakers, farmers and millers came together the following day to attack Leclerc for its campaign. Stirring the ire of five key players in the industry that branded the measure as “shameful” and “destructive” in a joint press release signed by the national farmers’ union FNSEA, the National Association of French Milling (ANMF), the National Confederation of French Bakery and Pastry shops (CNBPF), the organization representative of the French cereals sector Intercéréales and the General Association of Wheat Producers (AGPB).

“Just when the government and all our professions are working to pay farmers fairly, Leclerc launches this campaign that destroys values,” they said, accusing the supermarket of “demagogy”.

In the joint statement, the five organizations emphasized the difficult circumstances they said they are facing. For many years now, they said they have been fighting to be paid more fairly, while the price of wheat has exploded worldwide in recent months, and production costs are also increasing “strongly.”

“We’re trying to keep up jobs and quality, there’s a price for that,” the head of the ANMF millers’ association, Jean-Francois Loiseau, told AFP.
“We have to pay people properly, those who plant, harvest, who gather the grain and make flour, those who make the bread. What Leclerc is doing is shameful,” he said.

Leclerc boss, Michel-Édouard Leclerc, told business magazine Capital that prices for baguettes in his shops has been about 30 cents “for at least a year”…“In an environment where [prices for] everything are going up and will keep going up, we wanted to send a signal that Leclerc will keep prices accessible for consumers,” he said.

“Players in this sector have to accept that Leclerc shops have control over their relationship with consumers,” he added.

After an increase in 2021, the purchasing power per household in France is expected to fall by 0.5% in the first half of the year according to an assessment by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee).