Groupe Le Duff is a French restaurant conglomerate, with holdings in Europe and the Americas, consisting of over 1,310 restaurants and bakeries. It includes

Bridor Bridor is a bakery product manufacturing company founded by Louis Le Duff in 1988 and a subsidiary of Groupe Le Duff. The company is based in Brittany near Rennes. It operates in France under the brand Bridor de France and in the UK as Bridor ...

, La Madeleine, Kamps,

Mimi's Cafe Mimi's Bistro + Bakery (formerly Mimi's Café) is an American restaurant chain with 46 locations in 12 states. Originally headquartered in Tustin, California, its headquarters moved to Dallas, Texas in 2014 after 36 years in California. It serve ...

, Pizza Del Arte, and Brioche Dorée. The company was founded in 1976, by

Louis Le Duff Louis Le Duff (born 1945/1946) is a French billionaire businessman, and the founder and CEO of Groupe Le Duff and the Brioche Dorée bakery chain. Early life Le Duff went to school at Lycée de la Croix-Rouge, Brest. He earned a bachelor's degre ...

, with the opening of the first Brioche Dorée in

Brest Brest may refer to: Places *Brest, Belarus **Brest Region **Brest Airport **Brest Fortress * Brest, Kyustendil Province, Bulgaria * Břest, Czech Republic *Brest, France ** Arrondissement of Brest **Brest Bretagne Airport ** Château de Brest *Br ...

, France. As of 2014, the company had 28,000 employees and sales of Euro 1.5 billion. Its headquarters are in

Rennes Rennes (; br, Roazhon ; Gallo: ''Resnn''; ) is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France at the confluence of the Ille and the Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department ...

, France.

History

Louis Le Duff opened his first establishment with the Brioche Dorée sign in 1976 with the equivalent of €1,500 of personal contribution. He created the first “French-style” fast food establishment. In 1983, Louis Le Duff diversified the group's activities with the creation of the "Pizzeria Lucio" chain which merged with the Pizza Del Arte brand, renamed Del Arte after its takeover from the Accor Group in 1996. In 1984, the first Bridor factory opened in Montreal. Four years later the first hexagonal unit moved to Servon-sur-Vilaine in Ille-et-Vilaine. In 1989, the Le Duff Group acquired the Fournil de Pierre brand. In July 2022, Le Duff acquired Lecoq Cuisine Corp., a Connecticut-based manufacturer of Viennese and French-style pastries.

Le Duff America

Le Duff America operates the conglomerate's US restaurant chains. These consist primarily of

Bruegger's Bruegger's Enterprises, Inc. is a restaurant operator and subsidiary of the Luxembourg-based company JAB Holding Company. It and its wholly owned subsidiary Threecaf Brands Canada, Inc., are franchisers and operators of Bruegger's bakery-cafés, ...

, La Madeleine Country French Café, Brioche Dorée, and

. Le Duff America is headquartered in

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. It was formed following the acquisition of Bruegger's by Groupe Le Duff in 2011, at the time naming Bruegger's CEO

James J. Greco James Joseph Greco (born January 4, 1958) is an American businessman and entrepreneur. Currently, he serves as the president and chief executive officer of foodservice investment firm Pilgrim Holdings. Throughout his career, he has held numerou ...

and CEO of Groupe Le Duff's prior American operations, Claude Bergeron, as co-CEOs of Le Duff America. Le Duff sold Bruegger's in 2017 to Caribou Coffee. In 2018,

MTY Food Group MTY Food Group is a Canadian franchisor and operator of numerous casual dining, fast casual, and quick service restaurants operating under more than 70 brand names, some of them through wholly owned subsidiaries. Headquartered in the Montreal bor ...

announced the acquisition of Timothy's World Coffee along with Mmmuffins from Le Duff America.

References

External links

Groupe Le Duff website (English-language version)
Catering and food service companies of France Companies based in Brittany French companies established in 1976 Restaurant chains in France Rennes {{France-company-stub