While she was telling how she had joined, in 2005, the frozen food packaging chain of Toupargel, in Argentan (Orne), Karline Geslot, 48, FO delegate, looked up at the building. A long melancholy look. Which said so much regarding what this gray block that she saw coming out of the ground meant to her.
“At the opening, there were not many of us. We saw it as a family, which we saw growing up, she says. We did not look at our overtime, our nights until 1 am, our Sundays, sometimes, to see, following eighteen years, the death of our company. And for us, contempt. It’s a bitter taste… The impression of being a simple number. That we took, that we throw away. »
Like her, the 1,600 employees of the home delivery company for fresh and frozen food products Place du Marché (formerly Toupargel) have no illusions regarding the decision of the Lyon Commercial Court, Wednesday January 11: fault of buyer, it will be the judicial liquidation, as for the sister companies, Touparlog and Eismann (300 employees). Three years following their takeover, already within the framework of a receivership procedure, by the company Agihold, the brothers Léo and Patrick Bahadourian, co-founders and shareholders of the Grand Frais brand.
Health crisis and wave of inflation
Telemarketers have already warned customers, also informed of the “end of activity” by email on January 4. The Placedumarche.fr website is now ” unavailable “.
Here lies the success story built in the 1980s by the Tchenio family on a model that had been able to find its customers, particularly in rural areas: telephone orders for frozen foods delivered to their homes. The company grew in the 2000s through the acquisition of competitors, such as Agrigel. But it missed the turn of the Internet: its customers went from 1.3 million in 2011 to 238,000 in 2017, according to a source close to management. Today, the company still has 110 agencies in France and three order preparation platforms: Argentan, Montauban and Chalon-sur-Saône (Saône-et-Loire).
Market Square declined to comment before the judgment. But, when she requested placement in the safeguard procedure, at the end of October 2022, she told AFP that she was facing “unpredictable and uncontrollable external elements”, such as the health crisis, which disrupted its supply, and the wave of inflation. “The financing of the project initially planned for the takeover was ultimately more than doubled, in order to make up for the unforeseen start-up losses”, she specified. The shareholders would have invested more than 50 million euros.
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