Tins of baked beans are flying off the shelves of a book shop in Paris, thanks to the growing expatriate market and the flourishing French demand for British cuisine.
By Chris Irvine - The Daily Telegraph: 03 Dec 2009
Photo left by Paul Grover
A WH Smith bookshop in Paris had set up a small section of its store for traditional British goods including jelly babies, shortbread and Walker's crisps.
But the sale of the goods has proved so popular, they have had to double the size of their department, and believe they will still be sold out of goods including mince pies by Christmas.
Exports of British food and drink to France have jumped up by 11.5 per cent in the last year alone. Sales reached £1.37 billion in the first nine months of the year, rates the country has not enjoyed since the BSE crisis in the 1990s. France is now the second biggest market for British food after Ireland.
"We now have 610 references and we have tripled the number of mince pies we are ordering this year, compared to last year," according to a spokesman for WH Smith. "But it still looks like we might be sold out by Christmas."
British food, which is traditionally mocked by the French – former President Jacques Chirac once said "One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad" – is even being backed by newspaper Le Figaro.
In their cultural magazine, Le Figaroscope, columnist Anne-Charlotte de Langhe, said: "It is impossible to resist the invader".
Chris Brockman, a market research manager at Leatherhead Food International says the success is thanks to British expats as well as the changing nature of French eating habits – they are increasingly adopting British style snacks, known as 'Le snacking', rather than long lunches.
"The UK is getting a reputation for innovation and creativity," he told The Times.
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The reality is that now French food is expensive even for the French.
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