Winning a gold bar by purchasing a galette des rois is what 43 French bakeries offer, including five in Hauts-de-France. A paid communication operation for bakeries as well as for their ingot manufacturing partner.
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In this bakery on the Grand-Place in Arras, customers try their luck. When buying their king cakes, they scan a QR code hoping to win a gold bar. And many of them do so since bakeries from Lille, Cambrai, Amiens and Beauvais also participate.
The reward weighs five grams and is worth €445. A rather expensive bean for consumers, but not for Frédéric Jonquois, the Arras baker: “This is my communications budget for the year. So I find that 400€ is not excessive. Normally, we don’t advertise that much because each time, there’s no real return. It mainly benefits advertisers“.
The merchant had been looking to set up this type of partnership for a long time. It was last year that he launched the Comptoir national de l’or. “Doing it yourself is complicated. It’s a job. You need a bailiff for the draw, write general rules of the game… You cannot make your friend win the ingot“. Enough to reassure the competitors.
While focusing on its core business, pancakes, the artisan benefits from a whole advertising package designed by the Comptoir national de l’or: leaflets, posters, packaging… “They do the communication and I invest in the bullion. It’s getting people talking about us. When we see the cost of advertising today, it is not such a significant cost. And then, it guarantees you more customers“, says the baker who revealed a profitable strategy last year while remaining discreet about the figures.
The partnership is national, but it maintains local exclusivity. No more than one bakery per department. Frédéric is delighted: “It makes the bakery known. There’s a 50/50 chance that they’ll take something else and come back.“.
The operation aims to put the spotlight on the bakeries, but also on the gold dealer, as explained by Farrida Bouguerra, national referent for the network. “It allows people to talk about this area, which is still little known to the general public, and to pass on traditions. In the post-war period, people bought a lot of gold, but today it’s mostly older people. We also have more and more young people under thirty who change their Bitcoins to buy physical gold because it allows them to secure their money.“.
According to her, the practice has become increasingly popular since the Covid 19 pandemic, but this operation aims to further popularize the practice thanks to a key player in local life: “The baker welcomes a large clientele. Everyone will buy their bread. It also allows us to get closer to a large audience to tell the story of gold and be able to increase our scope.“.
Obviously, even if you are lucky enough to win, there is no question of falling on the ingot while tasting the cake. “There will be a small ceremony to hand over the ingot at the end of January, like last year, with a deputy mayor, the representative of the Comptoir de l’or and me“, Frédéric Jonquois, the Arrageois baker, has already announced.
