From Shanghai To The Riviera

Harold Levillair took the franchise of PAUL, the French bakery brand founded in 1889, for mainland China, and opened the first bakeries in Shanghai in 2007. Shanghai Daily counted nine opened in twenty months.

Bread and pastries were made with ingredients imported from France. In October 2008 Chinese state television came to film the bakery for a report on French food in Shanghai, and presented him as the founder and chief executive of PAUL China.

The company welcomed trainees from Shanghai Young Bakers, a charity programme that teaches French bakery to young people. He later sold Levillair Group to a Chinese retail group, which rebranded the bakeries.

Le Pain Quotidien, founded in Brussels in 1990 by Alain Coumont, is built around a large communal table. The brand was then led from a head office in New York. Harold Levillair was its chief executive for France, and a franchise owner of the brand himself. The trade press presented him as directeur général of Le Pain Quotidien Provence, in charge of developing the French market.

In May 2014 the brand opened on the Croisette in Cannes, after Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, with 120 seats on the terrace. He described the communal table to the trade press as “the local Facebook”.