F: Now let’s turn to eating habits. France is traditionally known as home of the two-hour, sit-down mid-day meal, but now it is witnessing a boom in take-out sandwiches. At noon, customers line up outside Paris bakeries, waiting to buy long, thin versions of a shrimp salad and fruit sandwich, or other delicacies. The variation in eating habits is reflecting a deeper change in French society.
M: Right. It starts with a charge in the workforce. So it’s a feminization, white-collarization, if I can say so.
F: The result has been a revolution in one of France’s core industries: the bakery. Formerly, bakeries here offered a limited range of albeit excellent products, about four kinds of bread, breakfast and dessert pastries. Now, that’s just the start.
M: Au Pain Gourmet, a bakery on the corner of a market street, is in the ordinary working-class area of Paris. It’s eight in the morning, and the owner already has the slicer going, cutting bread for lunch sandwiches.
F: Every morning, Au Pain Gourmet, with its glass cases stacked full, does so much sandwich business. The owner says she’s just responding to the demand. She even tried making a four-course sandwich meal. It was a bit much for people to swallow.
M: Nowadays people want to eat faster at noon, and leave early at the end of the day. Life is changing, we have to keep up. The changes include women making up almost half the labor force now, and men, more likely to be working behind a jackhammer, not needing to eat so much.
F: They also have to pick up the children as early as possible, from the day-care center.
M: So basically, they look for something that’s very close to what is called fast food. And, the interesting point is that the supply that has developed goes well beyond your basic McDonald’s hamburgers.
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