Strasbourg (AFP)

It was (almost) the first in France, a "pioneer", today it's a McDonald's like 1,500 others in the country: the "McDo" des Halles, in Strasbourg, celebrates its 40 years, between fundamentive fundamentals and adaptation to new consumption patterns.

On Wednesday noon, a few days after the start of school, the 120 seats of the fast-food are occupied, until the last.

Hungry teenagers gobble up hamburgers with their school bags on their backs, parents sit with their kids, a young woman strums on her laptop while pecking fries, while "teammates" like McDonald's calls her employees , busy in the kitchen, at the crates and in the room, trays in hands.

Most of the teenagers present are regulars. "Last year, I came every day, in my high school there was no canteen," says Victoria Denjean, 18. "It's a drug!" Laughs one of his girlfriends.

At the entrance, in an alley of the Les Halles shopping center, a discreet plaque presents this restaurant as the "first McDonald's in France", inaugurated on September 17, 1979.

Fast food opened the same year as the large shopping center that houses it, between the station and the historic center of Strasbourg. A commercial gallery precisely denounced by some people in Strasbourg as cut off from the surrounding city and emblematic of an evolution towards a "franchised city".

If the location and size of this restaurant have remained the same for 40 years, the decor has changed.

"The first decoration was of Alsatian type: exposed beams and Alsatian frescoes, which showed the will of the brand to integrate into a fairly strong local culture," says Laurent Liautaud, franchisee of this restaurant and 13 others to Strasbourg and the surrounding area. "We did not come in saying" let's do a dinner, do what we do in the US ", he insists.

Today, more traces of beams and, on the walls, abstract paintings.

"We were pioneers," recalls Michel Ksiazenicer, the first franchisee of this restaurant, quoted on the website of McDonald's and speaks of a "warm welcome" and reactions "more curious than hostile" to the time.

- "Salad bar" -

However, the very first establishment of the American chain in France did not date from 1979 but from 1972. The French businessman Raymond Dayan, who had obtained the right to develop the brand, had opened a first McDonald's in Créteil, then a dozen others, including one on the Champs-Elysées.

The adventure turned out not to ketchup but to vinegar and, after a court battle in which he was accused of failing to comply with the rules of hygiene, Mr. Dayan had to abandon the McDonald's brand.

This legal battle was still raging when the first "official" McDonald's opened in Strasbourg.

"McDo did not believe in France at all as a potential market," says food economist Claude Fischler, according to which the Americans "gave the franchise to a Frenchman and were surprised that it works".

"As conditions they had agreed were too favorable, they have been struggling for years to find lice in the head of this dealer," says Claude Fischler.

Far from these hectic beginnings, McDonald's now has 1,464 restaurants in France.

Between January and early September, "we served the equivalent of the population of Strasbourg, with about 260,000 transactions in this restaurant," said Mr. Liautaud proudly.

In his early days, he says, this restaurant was able to rely on the company's logistics in Germany, where the first McDonald's opened in 1971.

McDo then evolved with the modes of consumption. Today, the restaurant Les Halles opens on a counter "McCafé", then, after passing in front of recycling bins, the customer arrives at a "salad bar". The "Veggie Veggie" is a veggie burger alongside burgers bursting with steaks and bacon.

But not far from there, in other aisles of the mall, opened a smoothie bar and a sign offering takeaway food in glass jars.

© 2019 AFP