The flagship of the Bordeaux cannelé Baillardran was fined 100,000 euros this Thursday before the Bordeaux Criminal Court for misleading commercial practices.
The company with 22 points of sale, known worldwide for its iconic pastries of Gironde origin, established with great marketing support, as a chic and expensive product, boasted on its packaging and in its advertisements the freshness of its cakes and the authenticity of the recipe based on “natural” products.
No butter
An inspection by the departmental population protection directorate (DDPP) revealed that reality diverged somewhat from the brand's communication. Some cannelés were not always fresh that day but could be frozen and resold the next day. The Arcachon store, for example, did not have an oven and only sold frozen foods, Philippe Baillardran, the representative and founder of the company, admitted to the bench during the hearing held on December 5.
As for the “natural” dimension promoted by the company, which highlighted a recipe based on butter, Madagascar vanilla and dark rum, it was also tempered by the inspectors of the former fraud repression. They discovered that the vanilla came mostly from industrial flavorings, the rum was whiter than brown, and the milk had been replaced with powdered milk. The butter had disappeared from the recipe.
-The company, however, escapes the additional penalty of publishing the conviction in its points of sale, as requested by the prosecution at the hearing. The public prosecutor had also requested a fine of 800,000 euros, half of which was fixed. The Bordeaux public prosecutor's office, like the company which was not represented at the time of the deliberations, has ten days to lodge an appeal.
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