The recipe for success seemed to be all there. Eggs, flour and sugar for the dough. Nutella, Kinder Bueno and a few pieces of speculoos as a filling. topping. With its beautiful window display, Cookies Richard had everything to please the inhabitants of Deauville. However, in this mini-boutique on rue Désiré-le-Hoc, customers are not exactly rushing in on this morning of August 21. And those who do venture there, tourists for the most part, are probably unaware of the affair that has occupied the city since the start of the Paris Olympic Games. Nearly a month ago, a wave of boycotts and hatred suddenly fell on the small artisanal business. Orchestrated, at first, by faceless strangers on social networks, it emerged after the shop decorated its cookies with flags in the colors of most of the countries participating in the Olympic Games, including Palestine.
Cookies Richard is first and foremost a family. The Forest family, made up of parents Isabelle and Pierre, who design the biscuits from their home in Pont-L’Evêque. There are also Alexia and Eliot, the children, who take care of sales from the shops in Deauville and Caen. And the dog Richard, who gave the company its name. A few days before the bad buzz, The family therefore ordered around two hundred and fifty mini-flags in the colours of the main delegations: Germany, Belgium, Finland, Israel… but also Palestine. Although not recognised as a state by the UN, it is represented by several athletes at the Paris Games. In the display case, each country is represented twice. “At no point did we think this would be a problem… We just wanted to decorate our cookies in reference to the event of the moment,” assures Eliot, the son.
Except that the next day, a photo showing one of the cookies in the colors of Palestine was published by an Internet user on Facebook, accompanied by the caption: ” Seen in Deauville! Boycott and share. » On the evening of July 25, the day before the opening ceremony, a flood of comments on Google began to denigrate the store and the quality of its products. We tried to respond to comments by explaining that it was not a political gesture, but people did not want to understand,” says Alexia.
Fake orders and threats on networks
In the days that followed, young people amused themselves by passing in front of the shop shouting: « Boycott ! Boycott ! » « We’re going to shut you down,” promises a passing lawyer one day.
The grandmother, the only member of the family to live in Deauville, was attacked in a café. Since then, she has not ” doesn’t leave her house anymore », tell her children. Louise, the 17-year-old seasonal worker, probably remains the most marked of all.
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