So-called Nutella riots broke out in France last Thursday after supermarket chain Intermarché offered a 70 per cent discount on the famous chocolate and hazelnut spread.
The three-day promotion, which lowered the price of a 950g jar from €4.50 to €1.41 (£3.90 to £1.24), triggered vicious brawls nationwide as customers fought over the cheap breakfast staple.
Videos of people punching and shoving each other in order to grab the maximum number of pots were circulated on social media, with witnesses saying customers had “behaved like animals”.
One customer said: “One woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady was hit in the head by a box, and one person had a bloody hand. It was horrible.”
Now the French finance ministry’s Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) consumer affairs and anti-fraud body will “look closely into the promotion”, a finance ministry spokesperson said.
France’s commercial code is incredibly strict, and shops are not allowed to sell food at a loss or dabble in “product dumping”. In other words, they cannot sell a product below its ‘fair’ price.
France also has strict rules concerning the size of discounts retailers can put on products outside the official biannual sales periods. Food promotions are only allowed if the product was bought one month before the start of the sales and if the price is considered fair.
Investigators will therefore need to know how much Intermarché paid for the spread in order to rule whether the promotion amounted to product dumping.
Nutella’s manufacturer, the Italian confectionary behemoth Ferrero, was quick to distance itself from the scandal, denouncing Intermarché’s “unilateral” decision to sell the spread at such a low price.
A spokesman said: “We deplore the promotion and its consequences, which created confusion and deception in the minds of consumers.”
French agriculture minister Stéphane Travert said last week he hoped to introduce new legislation to limit food discounts to 34 per cent of the cost price.