Baguettes coming to a McDo near you

The fast food giant is to begin selling breakfast tartines – sliced bread with butter, jam or marmalade – from this month and will also stock a range of sandwiches on baguettes from 2012.

The breakfast range will be sold at the group’s McCafés, which are separate counters in 130 French outlets selling coffees and pastries. Breakfast represents just 1% of McDonald’s sales in France.

The bread dough comes from the same suppliers as the sandwich chain Paul, which already supplies the pastries sold in McCafés, and will be cooked on the premises, with the smell of fresh bread wafting through the restaurant.

The move into baguettebased sandwiches is the latest attempt by McDonald’s to adjust to French tastes. The fast-food chain’s French operation, which is the most profitable in the world after the US, has been tailored to adapt to specifically French eating habits, with macaroons, whole-wheat bread for Big Macs and a hamburger containing 100% top-quality Charolais beef.

McDonald’s senior vicepresident for operations in southern Europe, Nawfal Trabelsi, said: “For the first 15 years, from 1980, what we did above all was offer people a slice of America.

“Today we are part of daily life in France and our priority is to integrate locally and add French culture to our historic offering of hamburgers and milkshakes. We are responding to demand.”

According to food marketing firm Gira Conseil, the French consume nine times more sandwiches than hamburgers. McDonald’s move into traditional sandwiches comes amid growing competition from Subway, the US sandwich franchise that has a network of 300 outlets here.