Carrefour launches franchise model in Brazil; Migration sparked protests in France – Estado de Minas

SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS) – Carrefour Brasil opened its first franchise in the country in March, a format already used by the group in 39 countries. The store is under the Express banner, with an initial investment expected at R$150,000.

The only point open so far is in a residential condominium in Guarulhos, in Greater São Paulo.

With an offer of 3,000 items, Carrefour Express is a flagship of more compact convenience stores, where the strong point is replacement purchases.

The company does not reveal how many franchises it intends to open in Brazil this year or whether the model should be replicated in other states.

In France, however, the model is the target of protests, because Carrefour is transforming several of its own stores into franchises, with consequent layoffs. According to critics, this is a disguised restructuring.

Questioned by Folha, Carrefour stated, through its press office, that the franchise implemented in Brazil is different from the French one.

“The model adopted in Brazil is exclusive to new stores, that is, stores that are created in new locations and come into existence in this model”, he stated. According to the company, the expansion of the group’s own stores continues.

The retailer has a business unit dedicated to franchises, the group’s Proximity Division, responsible for also implementing the project for the first autonomous store units (without employees) of Carrefour Express, in residential and corporate condominiums.

According to the company, the franchisee receives commercial and operational support from Carrefour, which takes care of purchasing products and logistics.

30 thousand jobs cut in France after advancement of franchises

According to reports in the French newspaper Le Monde, since the arrival of Alexandre Bompard as leader of Carrefour, in July 2017, the group has been outsourcing dozens of supermarkets and hypermarkets, and today the majority of convenience stores are managed under the franchise system. .

The CFDT (French Democratic Labor Confederation), which brings together French unions, went to court on March 11 against Carrefour for abusive franchising and rental management practices (the Carrefour Property unit manages the company’s real estate portfolio).

The union is asking for 23 million euros (R$124 million) in compensation and an end to the transfer of stores to these regimes.

In 2018, Carrefour employed around 115 thousand employees in its own stores in France. Today, there are 85 thousand, which represents a cut of 30 thousand vacancies, says Le Monde, citing CFDT. Until then, Carrefour was the largest private employer in France.

Former employees complain about the worsening of working conditions after the stores were transformed into franchises, with an increase in hours worked on Sundays and a drop in pay.

On average, workers lost 2,300 euros per year (R$12,400), as they no longer received profit sharing.

In France, at the end of 2022, among the group’s 5,945 stores, 96.7% of convenience stores, 74.3% of supermarkets and 29.1% of hypermarkets were managed by franchisees, with franchises representing 90% of store openings in Europe, says Le Monde.

Today, the company has 5,273 stores in France, the majority (3,959) of which are convenience stores, 1,071 Carrefour Market supermarkets and 243 hypermarkets.

For this year, the goal is to outsource 16 hypermarkets and 21 supermarkets in the country, which employ around 4,000 employees, says the French newspaper.

In 2022, in the announcement of the four-year strategic plan, “Carrefour 2026”, Bompard suggested new employee cuts, to make the group a “simpler”, “more agile”, “more efficient” organization.

“Carrefour needs a shock of simplification,” he said at the time, according to Le Monde.

Former director released a book denouncing model abuse

Jérôme Coulombel, former legal director of the Litigation Department at Carrefour France until 2018, caused a stir within the company when he launched, in September last year, the book “Carrefour, la grande arnaque” -“Carrefour, the great fraud”, in translation free (Editions du Rocher, 272 pages).

In the book, he tells behind the scenes of the French giant, which he says adopts “an unbalanced system that causes countless victims: suppliers under pressure, on whom disproportionate, even fictitious, demands are imposed; franchisees, financially strangled and kept imprisoned by contract; employees who lose their social benefits when they do not adhere to layoff plans [suspensão temporária do contrato de trabalho]; and, ultimately, customers who pay more and more.”

Coulombel co-founded the Carrefour Franchisees Association in 2020. In the book, he brings testimonials from the chain’s franchisees, who he considers victims of a “mousetrap”.

According to Le Monde, Coulombel was accused by his former employer of theft, blackmail and extortion, but was eventually acquitted.

At the time of launch, Carrefour stated that disputes with franchisees represent “less than 1% of its franchise contracts” and “reflect occasional disagreements.”

Here, Carrefour Brasil is the largest food retail group in the country. In addition to the Carrefour and Carrefour Express brands, it owns Atacadão, Carrefour Bairro, Carrefour Market, Nacional, Super Bompreço, Todo Dia and Sam’s Club.

The company also has a network of drugstores, gas stations and a bank. It earned R$115.4 billion in 2023, when it recorded a net loss of R$639 million. It has 1,188 stores in Brazil.

The group is the largest private employer in the country. By 2022, it had around 150,000 employees. But since October it has closed 104 stores considered loss-making and is expected to close 19 more by the end of the second quarter. It is estimated that the cut will affect around 12 thousand employees.