First McDonald's took French cities — now it's the new village café

Times

20-07-2025

Home to barely 3,000 people, the village of Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès in the south of France has a fine 17th-century church and narrow picturesque streets lined with stone buildings.
Since this spring, it can also boast its own branch of McDonald's.
In the country that invented haute cuisine, it is part of a drive by the American fast-food giant, which already has 1,560 French branches, to expand beyond its traditional sites in cities and out-of-town commercial centres. Fifty new outlets are due to open this year and, for the first time, many are expected to be in small rural communities.
'McDonald's has become a bit like the village café,' says Jérôme Fourquet, director of the opinion and business strategy department of Ifop, a leading French pollster.
For the leaders of such communities, the chain's arrival means much needed jobs. In Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès, it has become the biggest employer.
'They plan to hire 40 people,' Jean-François Durand-Coutelle, the mayor, told local media several months before the opening. 'As per my request, local people will be given priority, especially the young and those trying to supplement their pensions.'
For many in the restaurant business, however, McDonald's foray into la France profonde is yet another blow to the country's proud culinary tradition.
'We are losing our soul. The local authorities should stop this,' fumed Alain Fontaine, president of the French Association of Master Restaurateurs. 'Tourists will arrive in a 13th or 14th-century village, see the renovated fountain and church and magnificent walls, and then right in the middle of the square there will be a McDonald's — the same McDonald's they can find in Coventry, Northampton, New York or Milan. What's that all about?'
• Foodie breaks in France
French eating habits have changed dramatically since the first 'McDo', as it is known by fans and foes, opened in the Paris suburb of Créteil in 1972 — two years before the chain established a bridgehead on the other side of the Channel in Woolwich. It has long since been joined by other well-known fast food brands such as KFC, Burger King and Pizza Hut.
These days there are also countless other burger, chicken and kebab joints, as well as several chains selling 'French tacos', filled flour tortilla wraps that have little in common with their Mexican namesake.
The French still spend more time at the table than anyone else in the world — 133 minutes per day, compared with 79 in Britain and just 62 in America — but they are more likely to be eating a cheeseburger and fries than a plate of magret de canard or beef bourguignon. For the first time in 2023, sales of fast food overtook that of traditional restaurant fare and now account for 55 per cent of the restaurant market.
The young are its keenest consumers: 67 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds say they eat fast food at least two or three times a month, according to a study on French eating habits published last month by the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, a think tank. Of dishes served in restaurants, 70 per cent contain chips.
Alain Fontaine, 67, who also heads the Association of Bistros and Cafés, has witnessed the transformation of the French culinary landscape during his five decades in the restaurant business.
His career actually began in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, to which he decamped as a football-obsessed 20-year-old who dreamt of playing for Brian Clough's wildly successful Nottingham Forest. Despite a few trials, he never made it into the team and found himself working at the Novotel. Haute cuisine it was not. 'This was the beginning of the era of the microwave,' he recalled. 'And the Irish chef spent most of the day in the bar.'
For the past 23 years, Fontaine has run Le Mesturet (established 1883), near l'Opéra in Paris, which serves classics such as frogs' legs, foie gras de canard mi-cuit and blanquette de veau, all prepared and cooked on the premises.
In the meantime, the surrounding streets have filled with Japanese restaurants: there are 765 of them across Paris, putting them in second place among foreign cuisines behind Italian restaurants, of which there are 1,876. The nearby Golf-Drouot, a celebrated venue where Johnny Hallyday and fellow legends of French music played in the 1960s and 1970s, is now a Five Guys.
The latest challenge faced by French restaurateurs, Fontaine argues, is the growth of mid-market restaurant chains or groups that have long been common in Britain but have hitherto been a rarity in France.
They are often founded not by restaurateurs but by entrepreneurs or financial groups, whose deep pockets mean they can afford the best sites and, thanks to their size, can drive down the price of the food they buy.
'We independent restaurants are in the same situation as grocers were 40 years ago when they were first faced with the supermarkets,' he said. 'Now we are the ones are going to disappear.'
But Eloi Spinnler, 30, a prominent chef with 280,000 Instagram followers, wonders what the fuss is about. 'There have always been chains in France,' he said, citing old family favourites such as Léon de Bruxelles, Courtepaille and Buffalo Grill. 'The only thing that has changed is the new chains that have done well want people to eat well,' he added. 'Working well on social media is also very important.' Both aims apply to his own group, Bonaloi, which is due to open Envie, its third restaurant in Paris, in September.
Back in Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès, the community seems delighted with their new McDonald's. Among the handful eating there on Friday was Noemi Diaz, who had driven for a few minutes from nearby Moussac for a late lunch with her husband and three-year-old son, who had disappeared to the restaurant's play area. 'The prices are good and my son loves the games,' she said.
Despite Fontaine's concerns, the outlet lies not in the village's picturesque heart, but instead next to a petrol station in a commercial centre on its outskirts. This is deliberate, according to Yannick Augrandenis, a company spokesman: customers expect copious parking, while proximity to the road network means they can attract diners from the surrounding area.
In the past, McDonald's was targeted by those opposed to globalisation — most notably by José Bové, a sheep farmer who became known around the world after he and a group of friends attacked one of its branches in Millau, 75 miles to the west, in 1999 in protest at a 100 per cent tariff slapped by America on roquefort cheese and other European products in a trade war.
Although American tariffs are back on the table again, thanks to President Trump, the French see McDonald's differently these days, not least because three quarters of the food that goes into the two million meals its branches serve each day is sourced within the country.
'In nine out of ten cases we open new restaurants, we are welcomed,' Augrandenis said. 'In some cases it is even local landowners or local authorities who approach us.' Even if there is sometimes hostility, it quickly blows over.
Any hostility that there might have been from Laurent Galonier, who runs Le Rendez Vous, a bar restaurant in Saint-Geniès-de-Malgoirès, is long gone. 'It has had no impact whatsoever on my business,' he said, as a group of regulars sipped pastis at the bar.
'It's also a positive thing,' he said. 'I used to have to drive to the McDonald's in Nîmes and by the time I got it home it was all cold. Now it only takes me a few minutes.'