Drafted on 13 May, updated on 30 June 2026
Above: market shares of retailers in France in the sixth period of 2026
The French invented hypermarkets, and that’s where I started working in 1979, at Carrefour.
I’ve always wondered why they hadn’t abandoned the format, given its growing difficulties.
The answer came to me via Olivier Dauvers, an expert on the French retail sector: the turnover of these ‘monsters’ remains impressive. The top 25 French hypermarkets have a combined turnover of €4.3 billion. And the top six have revenues exceeding €200 million.
In this ranking, Leclerc is rising whilst Auchan is falling: 10 years ago, Leclerc had just one store in the top 25; today it has seven. Auchan had 16; today it has seven.
Leclerc, the leader in the French market, has continued to focus on hypermarkets, with success.
It is worth noting that the Carrefour hypermarkets, as well as having trained and fascinated me, were also a point of reference for our operational work: with Dr Alessandro D’Este, far right in the photo below, in 1991 – and other buyers, we often visited the stores in Antibes (top of the rankings) and Nice (Lingostière, seventh in the rankings).
These visits provided plenty of confirmation for the direction we were taking at Esselunga with organic produce and our own-brand products,as well as for the cured meats and cheeses sliced and sold in front of the delicatessen, at a separate counter, a self-service counter – a projectI developed upon returning from one of these trips with the young assistant buyers and purchasers of non-food and other products.
P.S.: I had established the role of buyer’s assistant, following the example I’d seen at Dominick’s in Chicago; I discussed this in my book *Le Ossa dei Caprotti*.
