Redundant workers turn to crowd-funding to save French biscuit brand
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Version 0 of 1. At the biscuit and cake-makers Jeannette de Caen, redundant workers are determined their famous madeleines should be more than just a Proustian memory. In liquidation since December when production halted, and faced with permanent closure, a crowd-funding appeal was launched for donations to save the 164-year-old Normandy company. The target was to raise €50,000 (£39,600) before a final court hearing to decide the fate of the factory, which has been occupied by laid-off workers since its closure. On Sunday/Yesterday, the deadline for contributions, the 25 workers were celebrating after collecting nearly £48,000. Now the organisers say they are extending the funding campaign until November 13 when Caen’s commercial tribunal will decide on the fate of the factory, in order to capitalise on the wave of public support. “Each additional contribution gives more weight to our side of the legal battle,” their company’s crowd-funding website announced. While the Biscuiterie Jeannette needs an estimated £795,000 to restart production, staff are hoping their success will persuade the banks to lend more money.In August, four offers for the company, none of which proposed restarting production in Normandy, were thrown out by a judge. The November hearing will consider applications from a total of seven interested parties, including businessman Georges Viana, who is behind the crowd-funding initiative and has the workers’ support after pledging to reopen the factory. Viana, 48, a graduate of France’s elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA), the country’s hothouse for business and political leaders, and Harvard Business School, specialises in rescuing “difficult” projects. He said he was “touched” by the Jeannette workers’ battle to save their jobs and factory, and by the threat to a “brand name familiar to me from my childhood teatime snacks”. “Jeannette is 164 years old and I would like my children to be able to see the 200th anniversary of this historic institution,” Viana said. He added he was forced to seek public donations after being refused bank loans. After the unexpected success of the campaign Viana thanked the 1,100 donors on the Biscuiterie Jeannette Facebook page. “During this campaign, I’ve received hundreds of heart-warming letters of support that made me determined to fight even harder for the Biscuiterie Jeannette, the heritage it represents and the jobs that are at risk,” he said. Viana said the success of the appeal would hopefully persuade both the courts and the banks that both he and the Biscuiterie Jeannette workers were serious. “The more money contributed, the better it will be for the project. The funds raised will be frozen until the company is relaunched. If it isn’t, people will be reimbursed,” Viana told journalists. “The business isn’t yet relaunched, but we already have customers,” he added. The madeleine, a traditional small sponge cake shaped like a shell, is an integral part of France’s culinary history and in his chef d’oeuvre A la Recherche du temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time), the first volume of which was published in 1913, Marcel Proust’s celebrated reflections on memory involved madeleine cakes. In what is known as the “episode of the madeleine”, Proust invokes the power of involuntary memory when he is reminded of his invalid aunt Léonie inviting him to bites of madeleines dunked in tea. More recently, the Pet Shop Boys’s 2012 album Elysium features the track Memory of the Future, whose lyrics also make reference to the famous French cakes. |