“Keep Calm and Eat Nutella” is a popular phrase referencing the famous chocolate and hazelnut spread made by Ferrero.
But on Thursday that slogan was taken to the extreme in France, after the supermarket chain Intermarché offered the product at a 70% discount – bringing the price down from about $5 U.S. to around a dollar.
The promotion quickly led to violent scenes of shoving that resulted in police being called.
On customer was quoted as describing the crowd as a bunch of animals, claiming to have seen someone pull a woman’s hair, an elderly lady being hit on the head with a box, another with a bleeding hand. One store employee said they tried to control the situation but the customers pushed them too.
At that store, the entire stock of Nutella disappeared within 15 minutes and one customer.
A Twitter user living in Bordeaux, in southwestern France, filmed a group of customers struggling to get his sweet pot and wrote: “Really? All this for Nutella?”
Serieux ??!! Tout ça pour du Nutella ?! ? #Emeute #Nutella pic.twitter.com/UoNTmK78eE
— •KENNY LE BON• (@kennyLebon) January 25, 2018
According to Ferrero, 365 million kilos of Nutella are consumed each year in 160 countries around the world. It was created by the Ferrero family in the 1940s in the Piedmont region of Italy, known for the quality of its hazelnuts.
The company decried the scenes of violence on Thursday, but noted that the discount had been decided unilaterally by Intermarché.
Photo: Allison Hare (cc)
