The French-style bakery and store chain is about to open 3rd store in Paris in addition to hundreds of its stores in Korea and the U.S., China, Singapore and Vietnam and delivers bakery products to around 50 restaurants in France and other countries
Chairman Hur Young-in of SPC Group which owns Paris Baguette.
Chairman Hur Young-in of the SPC Group, owner of Paris Baguette in Korea, is known for having a tough mind. It paid off in a gutsy move to expand the bakery to France, in Paris, of all places, to attract a more international clientele for its delicacies.
The bakery¡¯s shop in the No. 1 District in Paris was shoulder-to-shoulder during lunch hour on Oct. 26 as it was filled with customers, mostly residents from nearby neighborhoods, and young employees from nearby offices of the French capital.
More impressive is the fact that the bakery now delivers bakery products to around 50 restaurants, and the bakery is preparing to open its No. 3 Paris Baguette shop in Paris, five years since the opening of the first one.
France, with the most advanced culinary culture in the world, is known to be a virgin land for Korean foods. Many foreign restaurant chains did not have the courage to expand there, especially so with bakery shops outside France, which has an enviable reputation as the best place in the world to eat.
The chairman made up his mind to set up a number of Paris Baguette shops in Paris some 20 years ago by having its breads compete with those of the country.
About a decade following the opening of Paris Baguette in Korea, a rep. office for the bakery in Paris was opened Lyle, France, in 1998 from which they began to import wheat to bake baguettes and sell them. They waited until they became confident enough in the quality of their breaks to export them to France. In July, 2014, they set up the Charles No.1 shop in Paris which was followed by the No. 2 shop Opera also in Paris.
If the idea of buying a baguette from a vending machine appalled the traditional bread-loving French, there is perhaps more shocking news to come. In a perfect coals-to-Newcastle move, a South Korean chain opened a bakery called Paris Baguette in the heart of the French capital.
The food chain now says its global aim is to become to bread what McDonald¡¯s is to hamburgers, with plans to expand into 60 countries in the next six years.
The new 200-square meter boulangerie opened last month within walking distance from the Louvre, Paris City Hall, the Pont Neuf bridge and Notre Dame cathedral.
The Paris Baguette bakery chain was founded in 1988 by the Korean businessman Hur Young-in, head of the food and confectionary group SPC. It has 3,250 boulangerie à la française outlets in South Korea and bakeries in America, Singapore, Vietnam and China where it aims to open 500 shops.
At worldwide outlets outside France it calls itself a ¡°Traditional French bakery¡± – its logo features the Eiffel Tower – and employees wear stripy Breton T-shirts and berets. However, much of the bread is made in South Korea, frozen and dispatched around the globe.
At its first Paris outlet in the central 1st arrondissement near the Seine, the huge Paris Baguette boulangerie, with its chocolate brown awnings, employs local chefs and claims to use ¡°Only traditional French bakery ingredients and methods.¡±
¡°We regard France as the spiritual home of our bakery products.¡± Hur Young-in told the Korea Herald to mark the launch of the Paris boulangerie. ¡°The opening of our Paris store highlights our commitment to continually improving and perfecting the quality of our European-style bread and pastries.¡±
Few things are more sacred and symbolic to the French than bread in general, and the baguette in particular. Like wine, cheese, garlic, snails and berets, it has become one of the emblems of the nation, its people, traditions and the ¡°Terroir¡±, the notion of the land and the food it provides.
A view of the No. 2 Paris Baguette store Opera in Paris. (Photos: SPC Group)