Fabrice Beillevaire
Cheesemakers par excellence, from father to son

So then Fabrice, you grew up in Machecoul, in the Vendée marshlands located between the Loire estuary and the island of Noirmoutier. Could you tell us what it was like growing up there?  

I was born 40 years ago in Challans, in north-west Vendée, not far from Garnache and Machecoul, where my maternal and paternal grandparents were farmers, living just a few miles apart. I spent a lot of time at their homes. The former had a small farm with around 15 cows. The latter lived on the Vacheresse farm in the Vendée marshes, where my father founded the Beillevaire company back in 1980. I also spent a lot of time at my child minder’s, who lived just opposite the first of the Beillevaire company buildings, and where my parents worked from. They would drop me off in the morning and pick me up in the evening. And I also got to see them going about their daily activities!  

I had a very happy childhood in a rural farming community, which I loved. By way of an anecdote, my grandparents and my father took me frog gigging. At the age of 12, I began trading them, following in my father’s footsteps, who himself was doing the very same thing, a quarter of a century earlier. The local dealers put in their orders with me a few days prior, and I sold them at the Bernerie market where I used to go with my grandfather. He had a trailer and we would set up our stall just opposite to my father’s, who would be selling goat’s cheese and Tourteaux, small local cheesecakes. My grandfather sold butter, cream, and fromage blanc, while I sold the eggs. But that was my official cover! The unofficial part to my business was selling the frogs, but I wasn’t allowed to display them on the stall… That’s how I made myself a bit of pocket money. What’s more, this little earner selling frogs helped me put towards the funding of my first moped!  

Already a natural-born salesman then! 

Yes, that’s true, however farming appealed to me far more. Between the ages of 15 and 18, I worked on the farm every Saturday, and every other Sunday, as well as during the holidays. I mainly took care of the milking. There were around sixty cows. I would go out and fetch them in the marshes at 5 o’clock in the morning with my trusty flashlight. I brought them back to the farm, milked them, fed them, and sent them back out again for the day.  

I grew up in this setting, which I simply adored, so much so that I set my sights on being a farmer. In part, this may have been to annoy my father, who was planning a whole different future for me. Dad took over his parents’ farm, but he got out of farming to venture into local trading. On the local markets, he sold the butter, cream and cheese made by his parents, then by an employee once they had retired. Basically, he wasn’t best pleased at the idea of me getting into farming. He was all too aware of the challenges involved. He found this choice hard to comprehend, especially as his own living standards were now on the up, thanks to his new profession.  

How come you turned away from farming in the end?  

I spent my school years at the Établières secondary school in La Roche-sur-Yon. After passing my Baccalaureate (A-level exams), I ultimately came to realise that this wasn’t the right path for me. It was clear to me that the career development prospects were uncertain, that these are professions where people get themselves into heavy debt and earn little in return, and face many hurdles to overcome. This was also at a time when I was back working on the markets, but for real this time! Moreover, I really began to develop a liking for it… Trading started appealing to me more and more, but I felt stuck due to my agricultural studies. For want of a better solution, I signed up for a BTS (a two-year HNC technical degree) in “Rural Area Services”, based in Clisson. In parallel, I found a job working for a group of winegrowers in Mouzillon. They were looking for an intern to help expand their activity, dealing with supermarkets across the region. Though this wasn’t really in line with my study path, I managed to obtain the backing of my training mentor, by explaining that prior to setting services up in rural areas, you first had to think about generating wealth there… and it worked! I had a wonderful time. I would go along to the supermarkets and do in-store demos to promote the wines, sensing that the business of sales was right up my street. I was already regretting not having gone to business school.  

Following my BTS qualification, I headed straight for London, encouraged by my father who wanted me to see new places, and I took on odd jobs such as becoming a waiter on a campsite, or indeed a washer-upper in a restaurant basement.

Once back in France, I followed an industrial buyer training course delivered by the Nantes St-Nazaire Chamber of Industry and Commerce, in Nantes. I felt assured I would have no problems as a sales rep, and thought it might prove interesting for me to grasp what goes on in the buyer’s head. This training turned out to be highly useful, particularly as the head of the course urged me to return to England to perfect my English. I was back on the Eurostar again… In the restaurant where I’d done the washing up, which was also a grocery, I was given the opportunity of managing the cheese and charcuterie aisle. Here again, I was back to being a salesman and I just loved it. This job lasted for six months; I was 20 years old.  

You regret not going to a business school, yet you still pursued this training to be an industrial buyer. How have you made use of this? 

On the day of the thesis defence presentation, which I went along to wearing a suit and tie, I spotted a poster announcing the career fair being held in Nantes, on that very day. As I was already in my suit, straight after my presentation I made my way over! I had a few CVs with me and felt I had nothing to lose. My friends wanted us all to head to the restaurant to celebrate the end of the school year, however I insisted on joining up with them later. At the job fair, on the Berner stand, this firm specialised in professional tooling were hiring sales reps. And that very same day, right after my defence presentation, I landed my first real job! 

I therefore landed a job, based in Rennes, as an industrial sales rep. I sold bolts, screws, etc. However, I was useless at DIY! My greatest fear was the demos. At times, I found myself with these massive glue guns in my hands, not knowing how to reload the cartridges! Yet, for me, this became a real sales training ground. There were 800 of us across the whole of France, sent forth onto the road after a week of highly intensive training. Every evening, there was a regional ranking of the sales reps, we had a 3,000-page file containing an unbelievable number of referenced items… In the boot of our company car, there was a metal box with a multitude of customer files… In short, this was a one-of-a-kind sales experience, which lasted two years.  

Next, I went to Ansamble, a group catering company, and worked as their business developer, in Rouen. You had to canvass corporate and group restaurants, including schools, hospitals, care homes, etc. After getting off to a rather bumpy start, I worked with a manager and we made a great team, signing contracts to operate restaurants for very large companies in the Normandy region, such as Sanofi and Danone. Then I was assigned to our key accounts, in Paris, managing our national tendering process. I was on the provisional-results accounts and business plan presentation side of things. I had a great four-year run there.

It was at this point that you drew closer to Beillevaire, the company founded by your father, which was enjoying continued growth. You left for London to open a subsidiary over there. How did this work out for you? 

It was indeed at this point in my career when my father and I wanted to work together. We were keen to try out something new for the company: exports. And so, I found myself headed back over to England! The idea was to open a shop in London. Truth be told, this would prove rather tricky. In the space of ten months, I must have visited around a hundred premises… Meanwhile, we worked on revising the company’s graphic layout, defining the range and concept, not to mention the works we had to oversee in the shopwhich was near Harrods. It was a case of getting by as best I could, since I was working alone and my English level still wasn’t up to scratch!  

Nevertheless, at the opening, we felt there were still two or three weaknesses in our business. I had hired a couple of employees, but the sandwich offering was extremely time consuming. We had put too big a quantity of cheeses, fresh produce that was too plentiful in relation to demand, the shop was too large and so required a lot of cleaning every evening, and so forth. Yet, we managed to stay the course for a whole year. That was until the day when Harrods was sold to Qatar Holding. The clientele in the district, mainly composed French, American, Canadian, German, or Italian nationals working in the banking sector, gave way to a customer base from the Persian Gulf. Our model unravelled.  

To address this change in circumstances, I began to canvass some of the restaurants and hotels. This worked well. I sublet the shop in the centre of London and focused my business affairs on another one in Twickenham, where we prepared the orders a little on the sly, during the night, not having a licence to operate the place as a wholesaler. I would sneak off in my van at five o’clock in the morning to deliver the orders. Our turnover started to take off again. However, some people in the neighbourhood reported us to the police, mostly due to my employee who worked the night shift and put his music on full blast so as not to fall asleep! The veterinary services came to give me a fine but, luckily, they allowed me a month to find different premises and get my affairs in order.  

We had landed ourselves in hot water. I also had to juggle things with a business trip to San Francisco, where I went with my father to kickstart our exports to North America. And, out there, I managed to find some new premises! We moved out a fortnight later, during the night, as I didn’t want to lose out on revenue… Looking back, we were all swept up in the excitement of building a company. Everyone was at full throttle… Later, when the company is structuring itself, you can no longer do stuff like this!  

Currently, Beillevaire London is now a small company with a staff of eight, generating a turnover of two million pounds. We deliver directly to our customer base of over 200 professionals, hotels, restaurants, and chain stores.  We also deliver to Ireland and Scotland. Every week, we send the equivalent of a semi-trailer and a half to the United Kingdom.  

In 2017, you turned over the page of your London venture to start a new chapter, in Machecoul this time, at the group’s head offices. Were you looking to head up operations there?  

Indeed, my father and I were working with this prospect in mind, but to be done in stages. Prior to taking up the reins of the firm in 2020, I organised our exports so we could speed things up, I took care of a cheese dairy we’d acquired in Vivarais (south-eastern France) to increase its productivity, and managed a few of our biggest customers. It was at this time that I felt the need to get some further training. I wanted a training course that would enable me to gain a broader perspective and give me greater credibility, to understand and have the necessary discourse to manage a family-run SME, during this delicate phase of passing the baton from father to son. 

The Audencia MBA seemed ideal to me. The feedback I’d heard about it had been super positive. I told myself, come on, why not give it a go? I completed a VAE, a “validation of prior learning and experience” as I didn’t have a master’s degree, then enrolled on the course. I really enjoyed it. I liked the variety of learning styles, the quality of the classes in finance, management control, labour law, strategy, etc. Today, these are tools I use day in, day out! This training enabled me to gain credibility when I arrived in the company as the new director, helped to hone my discourse, and to successfully steer meetings using the appropriate language skills with my interlocutors, to implement the right tools related to management indicators, management, and performance management, that I would never have thought of prior to this. The teams were very appreciative of this more structured, more visible management style. Everyone got something out of it. 

If I hadn’t followed this training programme, I would have found myself completely at a loss. I wouldn’t have been able to manage things in the way I do today, where profit and loss accounts and various balance sheets have become part of my day-to-day life. If you aren’t able to grasp the subtleties of these types of tools, it’s hard to put indicators in place that will affect the results you are aiming to achieve. Too much time is wasted on things with little added value in terms of the actions that can be implemented to meet our objectives. Basically, you manage much more serenely and get to achieve better results. 

Ultimately, I didn’t have much of a choice. My father is very charismatic. Today, we are entering a more complex phase in our relationship, since he clearly sees me making headway. He is struggling to let go of the reins of the parts of the farming business he still has remaining. Yet, we are working this through and we will manage to sustain harmony, my father, my brother, and myself. There is mutual respect and real comprehension between us, so we’re lucky in this way! 

Taking over a family business with a workforce of 700 people and following in your father’s footsteps must weigh down heavy on your shoulders. How are you finding it all? 

It’s a little difficult, I’m not going to lie! However, my brother is really getting into his stride in the firm now, so I don’t feel like I’m doing it all on my own. I know I have someone I can trust and who I can count on, to discuss prospects, and the future. He also trained at Audencia, on the Grande Ecole programme, so we speak the same language. 

However, quite aside from the farming business, it’s not easy to find your place when you have this father who founded the company, who remains a symbol and authority at the firm, still today. And at the same time, you must honour his space, his aura, and his image. This is the trickiest part. Managing the transition after the founder has stepped down is a delicate task. This type of situation is common in all family-run businesses. Yet, this remains a highly enriching experience and we are lucky we get to experience it together. It is also an honour for my brother and I to take over the helm from our father!  

If you could do it all again, is there anything you would have done differently?  

Still today, I regret not giving myself the possibility of going to business school after my Baccalaureate exam, to benefit from the personal journey you enjoy in this type of study track: overseas internships, a broadening of one’s international horizons, exposure to tools, and trends. In London, I had no choice but to be curious about learning new things, but I had to force myself to do it. And going to a business school after my Baccalaureate wouldn’t have prevented me from going back to pursue an MBA. This would have been even more empowering!