Nutella 'riots': Shoppers left 'bruised and crying' after up to 600 pots of discounted spread sold out in five minutes, supermarket employees say

Martin Coulter26 January 2018

Shoppers were left "bruised and crying" when they were emerged empty-handed after a Nutella sale sparked "riots" in French supermarkets, the stores' employees say.

Supermarket employee Jean-Marie Dragon told French newspaper Le Progrès that up to 600 pots in one store in Montbrison sold out in five minutes.

The employee added that customers had visited the store the night before to "stash" some of the pots in other places and retrieve them the next day.

The frenzied crowd scrambles for jars of Nutella in a French supermarket

At L'Horme, supermarket workers said the discounted Nutella sold out in 15 minutes and that one customer even ended up with a black eye.

In Saint-Chamond, another anonymous worker said: "We sold what we sell in three months...Our [customers] were crying because they had nothing."

To avoid anymore scraps, some Intermarché shops limited the number of Nutella pots to three per person.

One anonymous employee told Le Progrès some customers hid jars of the chocolate hazelnut spread the night before the promotion in order to retrieve them on the day of the sale.

They said: "It was impressive...[We sold] 600 pots in five minutes.

Chaos: Shoppers fight over discounted Nutella jars in France
AP

"Some customers came the night before the promotion to stash the Nutella pots in other places.

"Today I solved the problem by limiting the number of pots to three per person...but they [started coming] back and forth.

"They were like animals... A woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady took a box on her head...another had a [bloody] hand. It was horrible."

Ferrero, owner of the Nutella brand, said: "This promotion was put in place independently by Intermarché.

"[We] deplore this operation and its consequences that create confusion and disappointment for customers."

Around 365 million kilos of the spread is eaten every year around the world, with an estimated 100 million jars consumed in France alone.

Nutella was created by the Ferrero family in northern Italy in the 1940s.

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