A study carried out by the company HelloFresh placed Strasbourg as the most expensive city in France (tied with Paris) for its baguettes. However, this result should be qualified, as the survey methodology has limitations.
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Baguettes from Strasbourg are as expensive as those from Paris, while commercial rents in the capital are normally well above all provincial towns. This is the result of a surprising survey carried out by the meal kit company HelloFresh and published ahead of World Bread Day on October 16.
“Unsurprisingly, Paris occupies first place in the ranking of the most expensive baguettes in France. But this year, Paris shares the bakery with Strasbourg, where the average price of the baguette also reaches 1.19 euros“, is written in the introduction to this study. Reprinted in several local media since then, is this investigation really relevant?
We tried to find out more, first from those mainly concerned (the bakers of Strasbourg), then with the help of professionals from the consumer price survey.
The HelloFresh site has put its methodology online. Ten bakeries per city were systematically questioned by telephone about the price of their baguette. “The bakeries were selected to represent different types of neighborhoods (city centers, residential areas, popular neighborhoods, commercial areas, etc.)“, it is written. The price is that of a “classic baguette” continues the comment.
The first reaction of the two survey professionals interviewed was to note the way in which the bakeries were questioned: by telephone. “The ideal would have been to go there, because you need to be able to verify that the product is indeed the one we are talking aboutestimates Isabelle Bourcier, head of studies at UFC Que Choisir and co-author of a comparative study on the price of baguettes in spring 2024. Our investigators had to weigh each baguette, she continues. Even if it is very codified and a baguette must weigh between 200 and 250 grams to have this designation, the values differ. Ideally, we should have even developed a price per kilo to be completely rigorous, but we had not done that ourselves.“
Another advantage of going on site: the possibility of clearly determining the nature of the bakery. Is this a truly artisanal bakery? From a bread store? A franchised business? “The main thing is to ensure that you are dealing with a homogeneous product to make the comparison, explains Sébastien Faivre, head of the consumer prices division at INSEE. Today, there are real differences in manufacturing costs between a traditional, organic baguette, or a baguette straight from a bread store. The solution is to go there.”
This is also what José Arroyo, president of the Federation of Bas-Rhin Bakeries, would like to emphasize. “We need to take a closer look at what’s behind the prices. I come from Toulouse, and I can tell you that generally speaking in the South-West of France, there are many more franchised bakeries than in Strasbourg. However, in these brands, there is a massification of the raw material and a much shorter fermentation phase than in artisanal bakeries, which makes it possible to offer more attractive prices. But the quality of the product is not the same.“Is the share of franchised bakeries greater in Marseille, where the average price of a baguette is the lowest (0.97 euros on average), than in Strasbourg? Another survey would be needed to determine this.
The other major limitation of the HelloFresh study is the sample size. Ten bakeries to determine an average per city is particularly few according to our investigators. “This leaves a little room for randomness, explains Isabelle Bourcier, from UFC Que Choisir. In statistics, there are what we call major trends: once we have passed samples of 1,000, the result no longer varies too much. Whereas between a sample of 10 and another of 100, we can have quite different trends. Just like between 100 and 1,000. For our survey, we questioned 1,000 bakeries throughout France.“
The risk is therefore that by choosing ten other Strasbourg bakeries, the result could potentially be completely different. “Afterwards, we did not make a quota according to the different urban areas, in the suburbs, in the city center, in upscale neighborhoods or not, which is what HelloFresh does.“, concedes Hélène Bourcier.
The objective was precisely to minimize the risk of randomness, but here too, the size of the sample poses a problem. “It seems difficult to carry out a real municipal division into ten bakeries, notes Sébastien Faivre from INSEE. It’s a shame because the survey was carried out by telephone, and the advantage is that it takes less time than going on site, so it might have been possible to interview more bakeries per city. But everything also depends on the means and time they have to carry out the investigation.“
However, not everything is to be thrown away in the study. It has the merit of making a comparison between the large cities of France, which neither INSEE nor UFC Que Choisir had achieved until now. “This should be taken with a grain of salt but it is not uninteresting at all. And, overall, this corresponds to a reality which is that of the difference between Paris and provincial towns.“An INSEE survey showed that there was a difference of around 7% in food prices between Paris and other large cities.”This is explained by the fact that salaries are higher in Paris, and therefore purchasing power is greater. Another factor is higher production costs due to much higher commercial rents in the capital.”
On the average price of the baguette, all the results correspond to other surveys carried out on the subject. “They are 1.09 euros on average across all bakeries with a sample of 100, we were 1.08 out of a sample of 1,000, so it’s more or less equivalent, adds Isabelle Bourcier. It can be improved but it is interesting and visibly close to the major trends.”
Apart from the equivalence between the price of the Strasbourg baguette and that of the Parisian baguette, nothing seems out of place compared to other surveys on the price of bread. Moreover, the president of the Federation of Bas-Rhin bakeries does not return to this average of 1.19 euros. “If the baguette is at this price it is not for nothing, estimates José Arroyo. There is no rent control in downtown Strasbourg unlike in Bordeaux, for example. Our colleague on rue des Halberdes, for example, pays 14,000 euros in rent per month, which must necessarily be passed on to the sale price.“
According to him, customers will not abandon the baguette despite the high prices, because inflation affects all businesses. And if there is one fact that this study clearly shows, it is that the myth of the 1 euro baguette is ancient history. Bread is getting more and more expensive, more and more quickly. According to INSEE, the average price of a baguette per kilo in France increased from 3.50 euros in 2018 to 4.05 euros in August 2024, an increase of 55 cents in 6 years. It had taken 14 years for such inflation previously.
