“What saved us were the values ​​of the founder of the company”: 48 hours in a profitable cannery

This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the report above. Click on the video to watch it in full. The Belle-Iloise store, in Quiberon, has established itself as an essential place on the Morbihan peninsula.

With 30,000 customers per year, the historic cannery continues to be popular for its famous sardines, sold since 1932 in colorful, eye-catching boxes. A customer notices "at least 30% difference" between the prices of the supermarket and those charged by the brand, but, "when you love, you don't count", concludes another fan. “The success of this store is not anecdotal, it was even the key to the survival of the brand,” indicates Haron Tanzit, who spent 48 hours alongside those who keep Belle-Iloise alive, to understand the secrets of the success of the last Quiberon cannery.

Bernard Hilliet, the founder's son, managed the company for more than forty years. “He had 14 canneries in Quiberon, at that time, and 160 canneries in France making sardines-tuna-mackerel. Today, I think there are seven,” he says.

But then, what happened? “Small grocery stores are disappearing, large-scale distribution is setting up. And then, increased external competition, starting with Morocco,” summarizes Bernard.

Much lower prices, “for a quality that has absolutely nothing to do with it”. “What saved us were the values ​​of the founder of the company, my father,” he analyzes. "When he received emissaries from the government, who had toured all the canneries telling us, 'You know, times are changing, get together, lower the selling price […]' He said: 'I will continue to make the quality that I have always made,'" Bernard Hilliet recounts.

That’s when the store was born. But there is another difficulty that the company had to overcome, which is a daily challenge: finding the labor to make its preserves. To get a sense of this, Bernard's daughter, Caroline Hilliet, opened the doors of the Belle-Iloise factory to us.

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Machine-translated from French