France's Favorite Grocery Store Only Sells Frozen Nutrient. Surprised? Yous Shouldn't Be.
France seems similar a food lover's paradise, filled with open markets chock with the season'due south freshest fruits and vegetables. Only when I moved to Paris in 2008, anybody was whispering about some other place to shop for food. "Information technology really makes my life easier," my friend Jérôme tells me. "It'southward my secret to a stress-free dinner party," says another friend, Pierre. Information technology's called Picard — and almost everything they sell is frozen.
From green beans to blueberries to foie gras-filled filo pastry pockets, Picard's products are known every bit the French home cook'southward all-time-kept underground. Simply how did a land that celebrates seasonal produce fall in love with a frozen food chain? Today, nosotros look at Picard Surgelés — how it started, why people honey it, and whether it might ever come up stateside.
What Is Picard?
At offset glance, the store looks like a cryogenics laboratory, the walls lined with common cold cases, and with more rows of deep freezers creating aisles through the center. The infinite is relatively small — nearly 2,000 square feet, on average — with austere tiled floors and fluorescent bulbs that bandage a dystopian light. Signs in imperial blue and images of oversized snowflakes contribute to the overall impression of iciness. Bated from a few pantry items — things like jarred tapenade, shortbread cookies, and ice foam cones — all of Picard's 1,200 products are frozen. Shoppers stash their purchases in large, insulated numberless to ensure everything is carried home at the proper temperature.
If it sounds a chip cultish, that's considering it is. French people rave about Picard to the point of obsession; the French media writes breathless articles about its astonishing success; in 2014, French consumers ranked it their favorite brand. Picard dinner parties are legendary, with the hosts hiding the telltale blue boxes deep in the recycling bin. "I always take something from Picard in the freezer; slices of mango at the moment," says my friend Jérôme.
The company began in 1906, when Raymond Picard began delivering blocks of Tall ice to Paris-area homes before refrigerators and freezers were common. Past 1974, the business organisation had been purchased by Arnaud Decelle, who began selling frozen vegetables from a storefront in Paris. Today, Picard is endemic jointly by Swiss-Irish food conglomerate, Aryzta, and individual disinterestedness grouping, Lion Capital, and has nigh 1,000 stores in France, where it commands 20 percent of the frozen food marketplace. A contempo expansion has also brought branches to Kingdom of belgium, Italy, Switzerland, and Sweden.
What Y'all Detect in Picard's Freezers: Delicious Convenience
Picard's products can be loosely divided into ii categories. There are the fresh frozen ingredients: bags of unadulterated fruits and vegetables; meat and fish; timesaving conveniences, like minced ginger, chopped herbs, or sautéed shallots; and a range of sauces, such as beurre blanc with Noilly Prat vermouth.
"Their range of frozen fruits and vegetables is huge — bigger than in the states," says Camille Malmquist, a pastry chef and Picard fan, who lived and worked in Paris for eight years. "They've got frozen peeled chestnuts, wild mushrooms, berries, pumpkin purée … all stuff that'southward harder to find at the market, and when you do, it's expensive and there's a fair amount of piece of work involved."
Indeed, convenience is a huge part of Picard'due south appeal. Take, for example, the store'south bestselling item: actress-fine dark-green beans, which come topped and tailed. Picard sells 16 metric tons of them — every day.
No, French People Really Don't Cook
The bulk of Picard's business comes from prepared foods, which cover every meal of the day, and sound like a fantasy menu of French cuisine. At that place are flaky croissants and tender butter brioches. Salads of puy lentils, or bulgur wheat and quinoa. Buckwheat galettes filled with mushrooms, ham, and Emmenthal cheese. Cocktail nibbles like gougère cheese puffs, or miniature quick breads of blue cheese, dear, and rosemary. Entrées range from the exotic — shrimp en papillote in a lemony kokosnoot milk sauce — to the more traditional, like duck confit with a side of sliced potatoes sautéed in duck fatty. Of the many desserts, the molten chocolate cake is a perennial favorite — the visitor sells two meg of them a year.
"We have this impression that French people only eat fresh food all the time, but the reality is — at least in Paris — a lot of people don't cook. You can tell from the minor kitchens," says Malmquist.
Picard maintains brand loyalty and involvement by introducing 200 new products a year, all of them meticulously researched to satisfy consumer tastes. These new items also boost the sales of existing favorites. For example, as noted past an commodity in French financial newspaper Les Echos, a molten white chocolate cake improved sales of the regular molten chocolate block, and a goat cheese, dear, and walnut pizza increased the sales of all the pizzas.
The Secret of Picard's Success: France Itself
"I think the success of Picard is deeply rooted in the nutrient culture of France," says Yves Coléon, president of Transmark Partners, a consulting grouping that advises European companies doing business organisation in the United States. "The reason people honey Picard is considering of the quality. In taste, texture, flavor — Picard is replicating the blazon of food French people similar — with the convenience of frozen food."
This commitment to high quality begins with the raw ingredients. Picard maintains close relationships with farmers and other food producers — 67 per centum of their products are grown in France — and imposes strict limits on the use of pesticides and fertilizers (they as well have an organic line). They will only sell fish caught within the final three days of a capture. As well, they concur food preparation to rigorous standards, inspecting each detail thousands of times. The issue is a consistently perfect product — for example, cakes baked to the aforementioned precise shade of gilt-brown.
The other key to Picard's success, says Coléon, is a very efficient supply chain. Because Picard controls every unmarried aspect of production, from field to mill to distribution, they tin can always ensure storage at the preferred temperature. "Ane of the reasons frozen food in the U.S. is loaded with additives and preservatives is considering products go through many variations of temperature cycles," says Coléon. "Picard doesn't have this problem."
Picard in the U.Due south.?
Picard'due south forays to the international marketplace have thus far been limited to Europe. But when the company recently announced plans to open in Nihon, American fans grew hopeful. Unfortunately, there are several obstacles to an expansion in the United States.
"In the States, frozen nutrient has e'er been viewed as a inexpensive, convenient alternative to preparing your repast," says Coléon. "My sense is they've determined that people in the states are not willing to pay 30 to 40 percent more for high-quality frozen food. People looking for quality products volition buy refrigerated or fresh — they're not going to the frozen instance."
The other problem, says Coléon, is the complicated equation of altitude and supply. In France, Picard has "their own stores, their own factories, a very close human relationship with growers. They are totally integrated — as far as I know, they are the only ones to be so closely integrated," he says. This concern model could be difficult to replicate in u.s.a., which is so much physically larger than France.
Still, for those longing for Picard, Coléon has identified a worthy substitute: Trader Joe'south. "They exercise a skilful task on frozen dessert. They control their supply concatenation pretty shut. They control their stores," he says. "Probably, it'southward as shut to Picard as you can find."
Psst, Trader Joe'south — tin can you outset stocking gougères?
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