2023-06-22 05:57:00
Orange with Media Services, published on Thursday June 22, 2023 at 07:57
The family brand has never recovered from the Covid-19 crisis, mowed down by repeated closures, the generalization of teleworking and the boom in home deliveries.
The Courtepaille catering brand, in great difficulty since the health crisis, will be partially taken over by the La Boucherie group. At present, more than 1,000 employees will not be kept.
Courtepaille, a “steak house” brand with an iconic thatched roof and a family clientele, will survive thanks to its partial takeover by the La Boucherie group, which will however leave half of the employees on the floor.
Born in 1961 and flourishing in the 70s and 80sthe restaurant chain with the iconic thatched roof, often located on the edge of the highways, still achieved an annual turnover of 190 million euros in 278 restaurants before the health crisis. But she never recovered from the pandemic.
In a judgment published on Wednesday and consulted by theAFP, the Commercial Court of Nanterre granted La Boucherie the takeover of the Courtepaille brand, in receivership, as well as that of 77 franchised restaurants and 10 directly owned establishments. But out of the 2,039 current employees of Courtepaillethe vast majority of whom are employees of the 144 restaurants directly managed by Napaqaro, its owner (itself owned by the TDR fund), more than a thousand will not be taken over at this stage, specified to theAFP an internal company source.
On the other hand “nearly a thousand jobs” should be saved thanks to this partial recovery. In detail, five of the 87 restaurants taken over will be taken over by an employee and by current franchisees -in Gonesse, Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, Rennes-Pacé, Brie-Comte-Robert and Ormesson-, who will become franchisees of La Boucherie , said a spokeswoman for this company to theAFP. “We are delighted to welcome Courtepaille to our family of brands and to work to preserve its identity and its heritage while injecting a new dynamic into it,” said Alexandre Baudaire, deputy general manager of La Boucherie, quoted in a press release. of the group. La Boucherie “will rely on the Courtepaille teams and the franchisees to relaunch the brand and its development”, he added.
Founded in 1987 by the Baudaire family, the dynamic La Boucherie group includes brands Restaurant La Boucherie, Poivre Rouge, Bistrot du Boucher, Le Kiosque du Boucher, Mister Döner and Constant, which have a turnover under banners of 160 million euros. With the takeover of Courtepaille, it will have 253 restaurants and nearly 3,000 employees.
On his side Napaqaro has made an offer of reclassification within its other brandBuffalo Grill and Popeyes, a young brand it plans to develop, involving 512 positions, recalled a spokeswoman for the company.
Almost three years earlier, in September 2020, Courtepaille, a chain of grill restaurants with a somewhat outdated image – rustic decor, wood fire and copper pans… – already in receivership, had been taken over by the fund British ICG by the company Napaqaro which wanted to invest in modernizing its network and renewing its concept in order to relaunch attendance. But this recovery might not be done: faced with “serious economic and financial difficulties caused by the Covid crisis”, which then “worsened”, explained Napaqaro, Courtepaille was placed in receivership.
Struggled by the long periods of closure of the dining room service during the health crisis, then by the boom in home deliveries and the generalization of teleworking, the family brand has never regained its pre-Covid level of attendance : it was still down 25% in 2022, compared to 2019. In addition “many employees left the company” during the pandemic, leaving Courtepaille “short of manpower: the services were not done correctly, which hastened our fall,” said theAFP Pascal Zoublir, CGT delegate of the company.
“We alerted on the management, the hiring, the wages which were too low, the working conditions, he affirmed. And the customers did not adhere to the tests which the management was doing: they removed the vegetables , the fish to make roast chicken… it was a disaster”. Then Courtepaille suffered from soaring inflation, which increased the cost of supplies and raw materials and forced its customers, families on tight budgets, to make choices in their consumption.
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