"A historic crisis": why bakers are suffering so much from the rise in energy prices

Ophélie Artaud 12:09 p.m., January 06, 2023

Electricity bills multiplied by eight, even ten for some.

The 33,000 French bakeries are paying a high price for the increase in the price of raw materials, but above all energy.

This Thursday, Emmanuel Macron asked energy suppliers to "renegotiate" the "excessive contracts" of all VSEs, including bakeries.

But why are these companies the most affected?

Jean-François Feuillette, founder and president of the Feuillette group bakeries and pastries, invited this Friday from "La France Bouge", provides some answers.

The entrepreneur, at the head of the third network of artisan bakeries in France, immediately recognizes that "it is the small structures that are the most impacted. In a bakery bakery, whether you are a small or a large structure, we use the same material. Whether we turn on an oven to bake 100 baguettes or to bake 1,000, it is the same cost of the price of energy. But of course, it is not the same cost per baguette when you cook 100 or when you cook 1,000", he insists at the microphone of Elisabeth Assayag.

"We are really in a historic crisis, it's unheard of!"

"The bakers have never had help to change their equipment"

While the electrical equipment needed to make the products is what explains the rise in bills, "bakers have never had help to change equipment. The oven is what consumes the most, it's the part and the most expensive. A bakery oven costs between 40,000 and 60,000 euros so you keep it for a long time: some ovens are around twenty years old and consume much more than recent equipment. But we also need other types of equipment , like the cold rooms, to make the bread rise slowly, which are very energy-intensive", explains Jean-François Feuillette.

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Especially since these ovens must operate at all times of the day, even if "we try to turn off our ovens when possible", specifies the entrepreneur, who wishes to open 18 new bakeries this year.

An additional electricity cost of 1 million euros for the Feuillette group

If being part of a group allows the 53 Feuillette bakeries to "better negotiate with suppliers, which means that we have limited the increases", however, "the additional cost of energy represents 1 million euros for the Feuillette group, which is huge", underlines its CEO.

As for the measures put in place by the government, such as the postponement of the payment of taxes or the termination of its energy contract free of charge, "it's going back to jump better", tackles Jean-François Feuillette.

"In no case will it pay our bills. For the moment it's nothing. Nothing has been done at the political level to help the bakeries."

That's why the CEO finally appealed to the state.

According to him, the only solution to save the sector: "cap the price per kilowatt hour".