French opening hours are notoriously difficult to pin down – Monique Jackman reveals why lunch breaks are such a moveable feast, and how not to get caught out
A two-hour lunch break, often from 12 noon to 2pm, is still the norm for shops of all sorts and sizes in most of France. This doesn’t apply only to villages, but also to small and medium-sized towns.
This is also common for businesses and offices of all types and sizes, including services ones, such as post offices, banks and even tourist offices. Therefore, carrying out quick errands during your lunch hour (as in the UK) is not, as a rule, possible.
This was the case before I left my native country in 1969, and it still is today. A very decent lunch break remains sacrosanct to the natives of the Hexagone.
It is clear that a good number of working people, perhaps the majority of them, like to go home for their lunch. So many small or medium food shops and small businesses are still family-owned and run, with the majority of staff living on the premises or nearby.
LUNCHTIME TREATS
What about those who don’t go home or lunch? As packed lunches – which would mean one-day-old baguette – don’t appeal to the French, some buy tasty snacks to enjoy in the office, a bar, a park, on a beach, a square and so forth.
Some large businesses run their own canteens. A surprising number of all the other workers do go to restaurants for midi.Indeed, besides occasional formal working lunches, many people enjoy going to a small restaurant nearby (it is a fact that a lot of small French restaurants are also still familyrun). People use these homely places anything between occasionally and often, or even always.
These lunch breaks can indeed be just that, ordinary lunch breaks, with friends or colleagues. This is a good place to point out that it has always been far from unusual for a French person of any age to eat out on his or her own any day of the week.
Once, my husband and I came across a large car park in the centre of a substantial town in Charente-Maritime (I’ve forgotten which one) that was free during these important two hours in the middle of the day. As well as tourists, this special deal might entice people to eat out a short drive away from their workplace. This is something we only ever saw once though.
I would say that the majority of food shops, of all sizes, and smaller supermarkets, close for their long lunch break of two hours or more. I have seen a good number of these shops, mostly in villages, that shut in the middle of the day for up to four hours.
Some however, especially boulangeries, close half an
