Michel-Édouard Leclerc, boss of the food group of the same name, has the value of money. When he was younger, he took on odd jobs to please himself, he told us in an interview.
Asked by The Women’s JournalMichel-Édouard Leclerc told us what the daily life of a boss as media-oriented as him is like, but also agreed to talk to us about money. Starting with his. And don’t think that the businessman is the high roller type. In his youth, he learned the value of money and it left its mark on him.
What was your first job in life?
From the age of 14/15, my sisters and I did internships for at least two months in stores, in the summer, plus a little at Christmas and Easter. I worked in all the departments: fruit and vegetables, butchery, delicatessen… I learned to cut roasts and put them in fillets. I also worked in the textile department. It was just starting out, it was my mother who launched textiles in the Leclerc centers. I made him stock sheets.
I took out the trash too. I took out the trash every morning. When we set up a fruit and vegetable section, when we set up a fresh produce section, we remove the tops and the leeks. We cut. There is a lot of waste to make the department look good. So I did that, I went to the recycling center. This is where I saw that there was a lot of material, a lot of waste. I discovered poverty there. This is where families came to look for these vegetable tops, these stained fruits.
And did it leave its mark on you?
These are experiences that mark your life. So not only have I never forgotten where I come from, but I have never idealized society either. In French society there have always been islands of poverty, archipelagos of poverty, and that is what motivates me, it motivates me in all new technologies, new ways of living, even organic and all that. For me it is very important that all of this remains accessible because once you have made all the constrained expenses such as housing and transport, you don’t have that much left over…
What did you do with your first salary?
There was the first party with friends where I didn’t really care. There were a lot of beers at the beach bars where I didn’t count too much either. But, otherwise, I saved my first salary to buy a motorcycle.
I was at university at the Sorbonne, in Paris, but I had to return to do my sailing competitions, in the harbor of Brest. So I bought a motorcycle with my first salary. It was a Honda 500.
And you still have it?
I had it stolen after three months! So I saved again to buy another motorcycle. I worked part-time at Bouygues construction site to pay for my studies in Paris and in the Bouygues parking lot, I had my second motorcycle broken down. There I understood, I bought a car, a second-hand Peugeot 204, with a hook behind to pull the boat trailer.
