Nutella is good. But is it shove-old-ladies-out-of-the-way good?
In some French grocery stores, yes, yes it is.
Intermarché supermarkets in France were scenes of chaos Thursday as customers competed for 70% discounts on the chocolate hazelnut spread. The grocery chain cut Nutella prices from €4.50 to €1.40, or about $5.60 to $1.74.
Shoppers pulled, punched, shoved, and used all means at their disposal to take advantage of the €3.10-per-jar discount.
A viral video reminiscent of a Black Friday gone wrong showed dozens of people pushing each other as they frantically grabbed Nutella jars from crates set on the floor. One shopper told Le Progres newspaper, “They are like animals. One woman had her hair pulled. An elderly lady took a box on her head. Another had a bloody hand. It was horrible.”
An Intermarché staffer in Moselle said shoppers piled in and “knocked everything over and broke stuff. It was an orgy.”
Le Parisien reported that police were called to multiple Intermarche locations to break up fistfights.
The Daily Mail said customers at an Intermarché in Saint-Cyprien “pounced” on an employee as he was carrying a crate of Nutella to the shelves. An Intermarché in Montbrison, meanwhile, limited the number of jars per customer to three. Store manager Jean-Marie Daragon said that “700 pots flew off the shelves in just 45 minutes.”
Ferrero, the Italian maker of Nutella, criticized Intermarché for offering the doorbuster discount, and said it “deplores this operation and its consequences, which create confusion and disappointments in the mind of consumers.”
Intermarché said in a statement that it regrets the “disagreeable events customers suffered.”
Consumers worldwide buy hundreds of millions of pounds worth of Nutella per year — over 800 million pounds in 2013.
This may have been Intermarché’s last nutty discount, and not just because of Thursday’s chaos. The day prior, France’s agriculture minister announced a new bill that would cap promotional food discounts at 34%.