GREGORY WARNER, HOST:
This is ROUGH TRANSLATION from NPR. I'm Gregory Warner. From a distance, you can see it - the familiar golden arches, the bright yellow M floating on the roof of a building in Marseille, France, on the outskirts of an immigrant neighborhood near a cluster of housing projects in the shadow of a freeway. It is the sort of McDonald's where, until recently, a traveler might have darted off the exit just long enough to do the drive-through and continue on their journey.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: I'm just arriving at the McDonald's.
WARNER: NPR's Eleanor Beardsley went to check out what this place has become.
BEARDSLEY: Wow.
WARNER: And what she's seeing - well, it is a crowded drive-through, but not with cars.
BEARDSLEY: It's full of people pushing baby carriages and carrying bags to get their supplies.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Bonjour.
MOHAMMED: (Speaking French).
WARNER: One of the volunteers here, named Mohammed, shows what's in these care packages that they're giving away.
MOHAMMED: (Speaking French).
WARNER: A bottle of oil, some sugar. You have flour, milk, vegetables, rice - so, yeah, not your typical McDonald's cuisine.
MOHAMMED: (Speaking French).
WARNER: Inside the restaurant, behind the white plastic counter and the posters advertising Happy Meals...
BEARDSLEY: A massive vat of entire chickens cooking up.
(Speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: (Speaking French).
Oh, my God. Like, 40 chickens at once she's cooking.
Oh, wow. That's incredible.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Huge vats of couscous as well.
WARNER: Without any official permission from McDonald's, this former restaurant has been occupied and repurposed as a food pantry and community hub during the pandemic. And as Eleanor makes her way through the socially distancing, mask-wearing crowd, she keeps meeting volunteers.
BEARDSLEY: There's a mother I met who brought her son.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: She said, I really want him to be part of this. There were artists coming out there to sketch and draw the McDonald's.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: I have free time, and I want to came here because the - l'ambiance.
BEARDSLEY: It drew people from all levels of society who were just attracted to this idea.
SYLVAN: Actually, I was going to depression, and I was like, what the heck can I do with my life?
BEARDSLEY: I met a student at a university in Marseilles. He took a semester off to come volunteer.
SYLVAN: When I discovered that this place was transformed in a good way, there's still hope. There is another world that is possible, and this is what we build here. My life is not useless 'cause I help. And I - in a way, I found my place.
WARNER: What's even more surprising than what this place has become and what it's come to mean to people is that the organizers of this food pantry and community center have kept certain elements of the original McDonald's like the big yellow M or the words of the slogan of McDonald's France, which is not "I'm lovin' it." That's the U.S. phrase. In France, it's "come as you are."
BEARDSLEY: (Speaking French) - come as you are, McDonald's.
WARNER: That's the French slogan.
BEARDSLEY: The French McDonald's. But they turned into (speaking French) - "as you are, you come." And they thought that was a big difference, and they loved that.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BEARDSLEY: But do you get it - (speaking French)? Maybe they just turned it on its head.
WARNER: This is ROUGH TRANSLATION, the show that brings you far-off stories that hit close to home. I'm Gregory Warner. It seems like a takeover of a fast-food restaurant, solidarity over profit, French lefties over American capitalism, couscous over fries. But here's the thing. This whole transformation was orchestrated by former McDonald's employees who loved their McDonald's and revered what it stood for so much that they are doing all of this to save the essence of what their McDonald's means to them.
Longtime ROUGH TRANSLATION listeners may remember that we did a story about these employees who saw the golden arches of McDonald's as their gateway to French society and who took the company's corporate slogan so deeply to heart, it would actually become a problem for the company. So much has happened since that initial episode ran that we want to tell you about, and so here's what we're going to do. We're going to play the original episode first, going to catch you up. And then we'll tell you all the stuff that's happened since.
Here's the original episode reported by Eleanor Beardsley with Marianne McCune. Here's Marianne.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
MARIANNE MCCUNE: This neighborhood this McDonald's is in is known mostly for bad things. Marseille is already known in France for its mafias and its drug gangs.
BEARDSLEY: And here's the McDonald's right up here.
MCCUNE: And the news out of this northern part of town is always about shootings and crime.
BEARDSLEY: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: The guy showing us around, Kamel Guemari - he's pointing out drug dealers on the streets we're passing.
KAMEL GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Kamel has a slender face, big, brown eyes, big, brown beard. He's the son of Algerian immigrants.
BEARDSLEY: Some of these doors are off. And the trash cans were all burned, and...
MCCUNE: There's a couch upside down.
BEARDSLEY: So we're going up to the neighborhood where Kamel grew up.
MCCUNE: Up a lonely winding road to this notoriously scary high-rise complex called La Savine.
BEARDSLEY: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: He's taking us to this spot where he has a specific memory.
BEARDSLEY: There's only one bus that comes up here, he says.
MCCUNE: Kamel keeps telling me to put my mic down below the windows. He doesn't want to attract attention.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: And at the last turn in the road, this one kid is standing guard - no one else around.
BEARDSLEY: The young guy there's wearing, like, a head mask, you know?
MCCUNE: A ski mask. He's the lookout for drug dealers. He's maybe 16. And Kamel says that easily could have been him 20 years ago. It's when the guy steps out in front of our car that Kamel says watch out and knocks my mic to the car floor. The kid strolls around to the window to find out what the hell we're doing here. Kamel tells him, I'm from here. And the kid's like, oh, OK, pardon - sorry - and goes back to his lookout spot.
It's right around the next bend that Kamel points to a little courtyard. And he tells us...
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: It was here that Ronald McDonald intervened.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, unintelligible).
MCCUNE: In 1998, when Kamel was 16 years old, Ronald McDonald came to his high-rise for a visit.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Ronald McDonald.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (Singing in French).
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: He did his jokes...
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ...Riddles...
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ...The magic tricks.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, speaking French).
MCCUNE: And Kamel says this visit from Ronald was a major event. People didn't come to this neighborhood from outside, let alone a guy with a red clown mouth doing magic tricks. And in fact, Ronald almost didn't do the show that day. He had to be coaxed into it by this guy.
FABRICE ELBAZ: My name is Fabrice Elbaz.
MCCUNE: Fabrice Elbaz - he was the restaurant manager at the time.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCCUNE: He's Jewish. And he was the one who brought Ronald and a car full of snacks and decorations. And Fabrice says, when they pulled up to the housing complex, Ronald McDonald started freaking out.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Right next to where he parked, Fabrice says, there were three charred cars. So Ronald looks at him, and he says...
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: This is where we're doing the thing? For Fabrice, this young manager, it wasn't just about a magic show. This was a hearts and minds campaign, a directive from the very top, part of McDonald's corporate strategy. You court customers by showing up in their neighborhoods. McDonald's had put pingpong tables at the foot of the high-rises, sponsored youth soccer leagues - the kids in McDonald's uniforms. Ronald's visit was a part of all that.
So the actor playing Ronald reluctantly gets out of the car, changes into a striped suit and orange wig. Fabrice sets up the snacks and party favors and the big Orange Bowl, the traditional McDonald's cooler with orangeade.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, singing in French).
MCCUNE: More than a hundred kids showed up to see him. The neighborhood moms brought sambusas, different traditional pastries and cakes, and the party was still going strong when Ronald had to go home - 5 p.m. sharp. He was a union actor.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters, singing in French).
MCCUNE: With kids still romping around and drinking their orangeade, Fabrice couldn't pack up the Orange Bowl and take Ronald home on time. So Kamel, who was then this lanky sort of rumpled kid - he offered to bring it back the next day.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: At this point, Kamel's parents had split. He's living half on the street, sometimes with friends. He wasn't going to school. He was embarrassed about his dirty clothes. And also, he had a lot of trouble reading - undiagnosed dyslexia. And Fabrice, though he's never met this kid from the worst of Marseille's public housing...
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: He didn't blink an eye...
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ...Didn't doubt him. Kamel remembers him saying...
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ..."OK. We'll trust you."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCCUNE: Next day, Kamel rides a scooter over to the McDonald's, carrying the big Orange Bowl cooler with him, and he returns it to Fabrice, the manager. And then...
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: He asked...
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ...Would it be possible for him to get a job?
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WARNER: What Kamel did not realize, standing there, waiting for a yes or a no, was that there was something working in his favor - an anecdote that had been told and retold by top executives and franchise owners of McDonalds all around the world. And it was a story about the LA riots of 1992.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace.
WARNER: After the acquittal of a group of white police officers who'd been videotaped beating an unarmed Black man named Rodney King, residents in poor Black neighborhoods started setting stores and restaurants on fire.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Cheering).
WARNER: But they spared McDonald's. McDonald's, they explained to reporters, was theirs. McDonald's had served students free lunches, given out coffee to neighbors and employed their kids.
This was all part of corporate strategy. Other franchise owners were encouraged to hire local. Some of them started paying employees while they did their homework or gave bonuses for good grades, even offered tutoring.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Fabrice says, "yeah, those things are part of marketing..."
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: "...A way of saying, we are here, we're going to stay here, and we're here to help."
So when Fabrice looks at this 16-year-old kid from the neighborhood asking for a job, what he sees is an opportunity for McDonald's to belong to this neighborhood. Here's this kid who's betting that flipping burgers for a low wage at his local McDonald's is a better choice than the easy money he could make working for the drug dealers in the housing complex. Fabrice thought, if this kid was going to bet on McDonald's, McDonald's should bet on him.
So Fabrice hands him a job application form, says sit down; write your cover letter. And Kamel - now he's not sure what to do. He doesn't read well. Remember; he's dyslexic. He can't write this on his own. And if Kamel was asking for a job in a regular French company, this is likely where it would have ended.
French company culture, especially back then, was traditional and strict, governed by hierarchy. But McDonald's was different. Fabrice remembers his own first week at the company when the president of McDonald's France...
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ...Came to his restaurant. He was an American guy, and Fabrice is flipping burgers for the first time.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: The tie of his uniform is tossed over his shoulder to keep it clean. And the president comes over to congratulate him and says...
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Hi, Fabrice - calls him by his first name.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: And Fabrice knew it was a strategy, that his boss had probably learned his name five minutes ago, but he was still enchanted. In other companies, people would definitely be using the formal you. At McDonald's, it was all informal, everyone rubbing shoulders.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Fabrice actually uses the word magic to describe this moment.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCCUNE: So in that moment with Kamel, this teenager who can barely read, standing there unable to fill out his job application, Fabrice just helps him. They write the cover letter together. And he gets the job, and he's terrible. He doesn't show up on time. He gets angry when his supervisors give him an order he doesn't agree with. He misses whole shifts, whole days, whole weeks with no warning. And then, Fabrice says, he'd show up all apologies.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Sometimes, Fabrice says, he wouldn't see Kamel for a month. And then, he says, he would personally walk over to Kamel's housing complex, find him and bring him back.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCCUNE: Fabrice saw something in Kamel. First, the way he'd watch and listen and learn, how he remembered everything he was told. But also, if there was trouble in the McDonald's, some fight broke out or purse got snatched, it was Kamel who would come out from behind the counter and break things up, settle the disputes. When Fabrice looks at Kamel now, with his combination of muscle and charisma, he thinks...
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ...He's a guy who, if he hadn't ended up at McDonald's...
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ...He would be the biggest crook on the block.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Kamel says he really did want this job. He wanted the regular salary, and he wanted the respect. But then he'd have these days at work where kids he knew from the neighborhood would come in.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: "They were these tough kids."
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: "And there I am with a mop and a bucket and cleaning off tables. Inside my head, I was like, crap. When I was out on the street, I was tough. And now, they're going to say, he does the housework."
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: On the side, when he wasn't showing up at work, Kamel started dabbling in crime - a little carjacking, delivering drugs across France, even to Spain. It paid better than McDonald's. When he was 18 or 19, he didn't show up to his McDonald's shift for a full six months. And then he remembers this day. He was back in town, and he ran into some of his former co-workers.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Come back, come back to work. You're still on the schedule, they told him.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: People had basically been covering for him as if he was just out for a sick day. So he walks back into the restaurant, and he says...
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ..."I came back, and I've got my uniform on."
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCCUNE: He says Fabrice went first into a rage, but then he decided to punish Kamel. That's how Kamel saw it at least. Fabrice sent him to work at a different McDonald's in an upscale mall an hour away on the bus. And this time, it's not just going to be kids from the neighborhood showing up in name-brand sneakers. The kids who worked at this McDonald's had pools at home and drove their parents' cars to and from work. Their parents were architects and doctors. And this restaurant? It was not run like a family. It was not set up to help kids like him. Fabrice says the boss there was not going to act fatherly and protective.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: He says there was a rigor that Kamel wasn't used to.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: You couldn't miss work.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: You couldn't arrive late. And Kamel? He pulled it off. But what he really remembers about this time is something else - that he was able to fit into this other world, one he had both judged and felt intimidated by. He could command their respect.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: And that, Kamel says, is when he started to feel really confident. It was a (speaking French).
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: A switch was flipped.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: He says he was hanging out with his co-workers at their villas, in their swimming pools and...
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ...Even their parents seemed to accept him.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: He says they didn't say, hey, don't hang out with that kid from the north side. Fabrice had hoped Kamel's time in the other McDonald's would turn him around. And it did. Six months later, when Kamel came back to work at the McDonald's in his own neighborhood, he was a model employee. And pretty soon, he got selected to go to Paris to take a test to become a manager himself.
It's a week-long exam, and on the first day there's a written test. And if you don't pass, you get sent home. You can't do the rest of the training. So on that first day, Kamel was terrified. Until now, he'd made every effort to hide these parts of himself, that he couldn't read or write well. In Paris that week, he decided he didn't want to do that.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Before the first exam, he says he went to the head trainer and just told him the truth.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: "I don't want to cheat," he told them, "but I would like for you to help me succeed." They put him in a room. They had him read the questions. And when there were things he didn't understand, the trainer explained the question to him in a language he could understand. Kamel gave the answers. And out of 25 questions, he says he made one mistake.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: That is when McDonald's made a true believer of Kamel. All those years of not giving up on him, helping him succeed over and over again - they got more than a manager. McDonald's won his loyalty.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCCUNE: It's been more than 20 years since that day Kamel promised to return Ronald McDonald's orange bowl. He still works at the same McDonald's where he got his first job. A lot of people have worked here a long time, made careers instead of passing through. To them, this little one-story restaurant amidst the miles of high-rises is this strange little oasis.
BEARDSLEY: This is where they all grew up. The mothers came here. They brought their kids.
MCCUNE: So outside there's a red-brick patio, and there's a big play structure they call a gym - like, a little tower, and there's little slides and windows they can pick through.
BEARDSLEY: The village cafe, basically.
MCCUNE: There are all kinds of families eating at picnic tables. It's truly like the billboards that you see around France for McDonald's. You see people of all ages and skin shades and dress styles. There are two women in headscarves eating fries. There's a blond dad squirting mayonnaise on his son's burger.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Some of the moms who live around here told us they know their teenagers are safe if they text from McDonald's.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Kamel knows everyone here and probably their grandparents. He's always greeting people with kisses on both cheeks...
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ...Whether it's a longtime customer or his staff. And he's spent all these years trying to bring people up the way Fabrice did for him, like a kid who works here now that they've hired straight out of prison. And then there's Marie France, a single mother from the neighborhood, who uses French expressions like this one.
MARIE FRANCE: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Oh, puree - oh, fudge. She says before she found work at this McDonald's, she spent years bouncing from job to job, battling depression. And when she first started working here, she had health problems. She was overweight.
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: She couldn't move fast enough to fill the orders in time. I was so slow, she says.
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: She was worried that she was going to be fired. But instead of firing her, Kamel coached her.
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: One day, Kamel said this phrase to her.
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: He said, here at this McDonald's...
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: ...Come as you are. And to Marie France, it felt like so much more than a slogan. It felt like gospel.
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Just like Kamel, she came with flaws. They accepted them, and they helped her overcome. But in 2018, Kamel and the other workers started to worry. There were rumblings of problems - some road construction keeping customers away. The franchise owner was sick, and he wanted to sell. There were rumors that it might not even be a McDonald's anymore. And finally, one spring day, Kamel and the others found out those rumors weren't just rumors. They were true.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: We were all shocked, Kamel says, hopeless.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: Now, this McDonald's had been sold before. It's part of a group of six McDonald's in Marseille that have passed through various hands through various franchise owners. But it's always been a McDonald's since 1992. Now with the threat of the Golden Arches coming down, Marie France says they started trying everything to save the restaurant.
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: The franchise owner told them they had to run a tighter ship to work faster and make the place shine, clean the walls, clean every nook and cranny. And so they did. They got on their hands and knees to scrub the toilets.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: They made the place impeccable.
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: When that didn't work, they started taking things into their own hands, trying to figure out someone to buy the franchise and keep it a McDonald's, meeting with a lawyer to see if they could stop the sale. But still, one hot summer day, the owner announces he's sold it. And while the other five of his McDonald's are going to a new franchise owner, this McDonald's will not be a McDonald's anymore. And Kamel, he calmly locks himself inside the McDonald's with a gallon of gasoline. Once he's inside and no one else can get in, he starts live-streaming on Facebook.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: On the video, you can see how skinny he's gotten. He's got bags under his eyes. He's only sleeping two or three hours a night. He's at risk of losing this place where he has spent half his life. He loves this place. There are all these people there who look to him to know what to do, and he says he let them down. So he starts pouring the gasoline all over himself.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Yelling, unintelligible).
MCCUNE: Marie France is outside with a bunch of the other employees, knocking on all the doors, calling for help, shaking, crying.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
WARNER: ROUGH TRANSLATION - back in a minute.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WARNER: This is NPR's ROUGH TRANSLATION. When we left our story, Kamel had locked himself inside that McDonald's, drenched in gasoline, still streaming on Facebook Live. Journalists were arriving outside, along with police and firefighters, and Kamel looks into his camera and mentions a name...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
WARNER: Abbassi - he's the guy who's buying the other five McDonald's.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
WARNER: Why won't you buy our McDonald's, too? It's because it's on the north side in this forgotten neighborhood.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
WARNER: And then he demands to talk to local politicians, and a senator actually answers his call. She promises to help and tells him, don't abandon your co-workers. So Kamel unlocks the door, walks out and is led away by a firefighter who wants to make sure he's OK.
That guy that Kamel mentioned, Abbassi - the one buying the other five McDonald's - he knows all about this Facebook video and says that the reason he's not buying this McDonald's is not because of what neighborhood it's in. It's because of who works there. Mohamed Abbassi lives in a posh neighborhood of Marseille. He says his neighbors are still surprised to find a family with Moroccan roots living next door, but he got rich as a McDonald's franchise owner. And he's known Kamel for years. He's seen him rise up and become a leader.
MOHAMED ABBASSI: I have a respect for Mr. Kamel Guemari, OK? But I don't want to work with him, OK? He chose one way. I chose another way, OK?
WARNER: Abbassi had known Kamel for years. He'd seen him rise up and become a leader, and he'd seen him use his charisma and his toughness to fight for higher salaries and better benefits. Abbassi says he turned workers into soldiers, which is not what Abbassi wants.
ABBASSI: This person - they only work for me, OK? It's not soldiers, you know, just workers.
WARNER: And so because Abbassi didn't want it and nobody did, the owner had sold this McDonald's to a halal foods company called Ali Foods (ph). McDonald's in France doesn't do halal. A couple weeks later, we asked NPR's Paris correspondent Eleanor Beardsley to head down to Marseille.
BEARDSLEY: Yeah. So I went down there, and I was quite surprised.
I see the McDonald's. It looks like a regular McDonald's on a busy traffic circle till you get closer.
All the windows of this McDonald's had black trash bags taped up so you couldn't see inside.
And you see all the posters in the windows - union posters. Open to dialogue, says one in big red letters. One of them says, total support to Kamel Guemari, who wanted to sacrifice his life for us. Let's go see.
Bonjour. Eleanor.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Bonjour.
So people are still wearing their uniforms. It's just a couple employees in here. I'm looking at the mattress on the floor, where some employees have been sleeping here every night since it's been occupied.
So I ran into all kinds of employees, even Fabrice, Kamel's first manager.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: And he was incensed, especially about the idea that they wanted to turn this McDonald's into a halal restaurant.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: You know, there are already halal restaurants here. They don't need another one. Fabrice is saying...
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: ...That this McDonald's is like a door to the rest of the world for people here. It's really a link to society. It's a link to the France outside of this neighborhood.
ELBAZ: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: In fact, everyone I talked to, but especially Muslims, were angered by this. They said opening a halal restaurant would be turning their neighborhood into some sort of Muslim ghetto.
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Marie France - you know, before the decision, she's so dispirited. And she says...
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: I feel like they're rejecting all the principles they wanted us to hold dear...
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: ...Like integration, acceptance, being given a second chance. Everything that gives us hope to succeed, they're rejecting now.
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: They'd been McDonald's. McDonald's means something to the world. What does Ali Foods mean? Nothing.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WARNER: So that's why the black bags in the windows and the mattresses on the floor. Kamel has organized all these workers to block the sale until the court can decide.
BEARDSLEY: They sued to block it because they said this was not a legitimate company. It would go bust in six months, and they would all lose their jobs. And it would be the French state who would pay their unemployment instead of McDonald's.
WARNER: They argue in court that the sale is actually a scheme to fire the McDonald's workers who'd been there for years.
BEARDSLEY: And I was in the McDonald's when we were waiting for the court's decision.
So everyone's sort of showing up today before the decision, greeting each other. I think there's going to be more and more people.
I'll never forget all the people coming in and out - people just from the neighborhood and people from other areas of Marseille. And you had, like, a congressman from Marseille, and you had local officials.
WARNER: Hours pass. It's a long wait. Thankfully, they're open enough to be making friends.
BEARDSLEY: (Speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: OK, the McDonald's employees are sitting here, waiting for the phone call from the court. There's a lot of media around.
(APPLAUSE)
BEARDSLEY: And they announced it, and the lawyer - they were on the phone with a lawyer, and it just erupted. Everyone erupted.
Oh, my God. It looks like they won.
(APPLAUSE)
BEARDSLEY: And there's tears in people's eyes. It's incredible.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: So the decision is made. The sale has been canceled. People are really happy.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking French).
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Then Kamel starts to speak, and he talks about - this is just vindication. The little lowdown employees, even from this very poor neighborhood in the north of the city, have been recognized.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Dancing in the parking lot.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: (Singing in French).
BEARDSLEY: You know, everybody just was partying and playing all these great left-wing songs like the Italian Resistance song from 1944 that everybody knows here.
WARNER: How does that go?
BEARDSLEY: Ciao, bella. Ciao, bella. Ciao, ciao, ciao. I mean, it's a great song. And then they were singing, you know, just these great street songs.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #12: (Singing in French).
BEARDSLEY: I thought this was going to be the end. I just thought, well, we're going to celebrate. They kept their McDonald's, and that's the end of the story. But that's when things got really complicated.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
BEARDSLEY: Well, OK. I came for the party where they were going to celebrate and Kamel was going to give a speech and all that. All the drinks are out. I mean, there's Coke and all the chips and yucky little candies. But, you know, everybody's ready, and then all of a sudden the party seems to be off.
WARNER: Did you literally walk into a celebration and see nobody there, and it's just...
BEARDSLEY: Yeah.
WARNER: ...Like, some Coke?
BEARDSLEY: Exactly. All of a sudden, Kamel and people were rushing in like, what are you doing? Where are you going? He said, we got to go. We got to go to the other McDonald's. And why? What's going on? Abbassi is coming. He's shown up there. It's like, what do you mean? I just didn't get it at all. And I was totally lost, yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WARNER: We are back with NPR's ROUGH TRANSLATION. And to understand where we left off, with Eleanor at a party and nobody there, you have to understand that Kamel was now facing a kind of choice - whether to celebrate a victory in this battle or go to war - because there is another part of that court decision. Yes, the court had stopped the sale of this one McDonald's, but it had approved the sale of the other five to Mohamed Abbassi, the franchise owner who wants nothing to do with Kamel.
Now Kamel's McDonald's was split off from the rest. And this may be more than you wanted to know about fast-food economics, but if you've got six McDonald's, you can share costs. You can absorb a, say, highly paid employee who's been there for decades, like Kamel. A standalone McDonald's - that is much more precarious.
MCCUNE: The whole time that Kamel was growing up in this McDonald's, learning the deep fryer and the cash register and then how to manage and motivate a team, he'd also been a kind of student of power. If at first he was the employee who would break up a fight or run down a purse snatcher, now he could rally dozens of McDonald's employees to fight. So in the middle of what was going to be a celebration, Kamel and the other organizers of the protest huddle around a table together, and they're telling him, we're counting on you. Kamel decides to put to use all the leadership skills he'd learned during his years at McDonald's and stand up to the new franchiser, stand up to Abbassi. He's going to try to reverse the whole sale.
BEARDSLEY: Oh, my God. This next day, I was kind of shocked. So we went around to these McDonald's.
And it's cool and dark inside another McDonald's in Marseilles.
They were occupied. We drove up to McDonald's, regular McDonald's. You know, you felt you could have been in America, and then you'd go up, and you'd see the black trash bags on the window.
The windows are blacked up.
And you'd go inside, and the workers would be there and huddled around. And Kamel would give them a booster speech. And they talked - you know, rah-rah, and great what you did, And, yes, we're with you.
So there's more employees huddled back here.
Everybody's wearing these shirts that say McStrike (ph).
WARNER: McStrike. It sounds like - so there's a bit of an anti-McDonald's aspect to this.
BEARDSLEY: You know, it's really funny. There should be a huge anti-McDonald's - and this is what I can never quite figure out. Through all of this, nobody is hating McDonald's. They felt they were helping McDonald's International from this ignominious ending in Marseilles that the local horrible franchiser had plotted and planned for them.
Well, we're leaving McDonald's. Well, (speaking French).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #13: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: In the union office where Kamel and the other workers go to strategize, there's a photo of the franchise owner, Mohamed Abbassi, the one who bought the other five restaurants but refused to buy the McDonald's where Kamel works. The photo is doctored to show him wearing a turban, and in the background, there are airplanes flying into the World Trade Center. They're making him out to be Osama bin Laden.
ABBASSI: I know all that happened. You know, it's fake news, OK?
MCCUNE: By the time I met Abbassi at his office above one of his flagship McDonald's, he had reclaimed control of the McDonald's he'd bought. There were no more plastic bags in the windows. But the fate of Kamel's and Marie France's restaurant, it was still in limbo. And the fight between Kamel and this new owner was still going full force - ongoing lawsuits, still bitter and nasty, each side calling the other thugs in person and on social media.
(Speaking French).
ABBASSI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: But beyond all the vitriol and the tit for tat, each man was fighting for his vision of what McDonald's is and what it should be. The surprising thing is Abbassi has a remarkably similar story to Kamel's. Growing up, he also felt like an outsider in France.
ABBASSI: It's very difficult, you know, when your name is Mohamed. OK? You are not white with blue eyes. It's very difficult here in France.
MCCUNE: Abbassi also grew up in the poor outskirts of a French city. McDonald's also gave him his first real break, and he rose up from there. And Abbassi has his own memories of being treated like someone worthwhile at McDonald's. He once drank beer with the president of McDonald's France.
ABBASSI: He speak with me normally, OK? How are you? Fine. You know? And I'm very shocked.
MCCUNE: McDonald's told each of them, come as you are. But Abbassi heard something different than Kamel in that phrase. Kamel heard, McDonald's is an institution that will take in hard-luck kids and turn them into respected leaders. Abbassi heard, McDonald's is a place where, no matter who you are, if you work hard, you can rise up and get rich.
ABBASSI: Americans guy never tell me, where you come from?
MCCUNE: He says they just want to know...
ABBASSI: How much I can give him the money, you know?
MCCUNE: ...How much I can earn for them.
ABBASSI: (Laughter, speaking French).
MCCUNE: Mohamed Abbassi says McDonald's is trapped in the middle of all the French paradoxes. We want businesses, but we don't want bosses. We want to take care of poor neighborhoods, but we don't want to pay taxes for it. He says, before, the French left protested McDonald's, even cheered when a restaurant was torn down.
ABBASSI: And now they tell, oh, this restaurant is very important.
MCCUNE: He says now they want McDonald's to do social work, to take care of people.
ABBASSI: You need McDonald's (laughter). It's just crazy, OK. (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: It's so cynical, he says. People are cynics.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCCUNE: Abbassi is not the kind of boss that would have kept teenage Kamel on his staff.
ABBASSI: (Speaking French).
MCCUNE: "I am not a tender guy," he says. "You don't succeed in business by being tender." He has employees who have risen from the bottom to the top, and he might have hired Kamel, but he wouldn't have given him those third, fifth, sixth chances. Now, Kamel and his co-workers are making so much noise - their fight to save their McDonald's is bringing so much bad press, it's making his McDonald's look bad. He just wants all that to go away, so he has changed his mind, and he's offering to buy it - but only on one condition, that he cut the four senior positions at the restaurant. So the McDonald's can stay a McDonald's only if Kamel leaves.
ABBASSI: If they don't take this solution, there are no solutions for this restaurant. And I think that finally it will be closed - OK? - and all the jobs are lose.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WARNER: OK. So that's how we left the story in 2019. And Abbassi's prediction, it kind of came true. Kamel and the strikers ran out of legal options. The last employees lost their jobs. Marie France got a small severance. And the courts finally ruled that the restaurant be liquidated and sold. Kamel and a few others continued to squat in the place, but the writing was on the wall. It seemed only a matter of time before...
BEARDSLEY: The provisions ran out. The jobs were over, and it was done.
WARNER: But it wasn't done.
BEARDSLEY: Well, something intervened called the pandemic.
WARNER: OK. I heard of that.
BEARDSLEY: And all of a sudden, there were lots of people in Marseilles who were really hungry, who were losing their jobs or couldn't get out. And Kamel and his allies, they saw that they were needed. And here they had a building with huge cooking facilities. And so they started a kitty online to raise funds, and they began feeding the community. And - (speaking French) - apple tree. Have you ever seen a McDonald's with an apple and a pear tree and a quince tree planted on the lot by the parking lot?
WARNER: The food pantry...
BEARDSLEY: Incredible.
WARNER: ...Turned out just to be the start of changes to come.
YAZID BENDAIF: (Speaking French).
WARNER: A volunteer, Yazid Bendaif, shows Eleanor the new community garden they've planted. They've also raised more money to give the building a paint job.
BEARDSLEY: It's painted pink and baby blue. I mean, even the roof is blue and pink with the yellow golden arches still on the roof.
WARNER: And they've taken the letters that used to spell McDonald's...
BEARDSLEY: These white, puffy letters that all the McDonald's in the world have - the same ones. You don't realize that till you see them. And then you're like, oh, those are McDonald's letters. But they've been cut, and they now spelled l'apres with a accent on the E, but the E is actually an A THAT they've turned upside down to look like an E. So it's the same letters. They've been cut up and soldered to spell L'apres M.
WARNER: OK. So they took the original sign, and they switched up some letters. What is L'apres M mean, though?
BEARDSLEY: The after. So I guess it's after McDonald's - the afterlife, the next thing, the next phase.
WARNER: The after McDonald's.
BEARDSLEY: Yeah.
(Speaking French).
WARNER: Kamel is not here at the McDonald's when Eleanor gets there.
BEARDSLEY: Kamel is this sort of elusive character. Everyone needs him. Everyone wants him.
WARNER: A lot of the volunteers tell her that he is the reason that they are there.
UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER #1: And then I met Kamel, who told me to...
UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER #2: He's integral to everything going around (laughter).
UNIDENTIFIED VOLUNTEER #3: I just met him last week. He's very charismatic. He's a very amazing man.
BEARDSLEY: He kind of comes late. You cannot call him. He's out of touch, out of pocket, but when he arrives, he's here, and he solves everything. I'm waiting for him now.
WARNER: And when Kamel does finally show up, Eleanor immediately notices that he's changed.
BEARDSLEY: You know, the edge - sort of the worker struggle edge he had to him before when he was fighting for McDonald's, you know, in megaphones, he does seem to have a softer edge now.
WARNER: What do you mean?
BEARDSLEY: Just it's not an edge anymore. He's got - he's been softened. And he's like this figure, this towering figure with twinkling eyes and a beard. And he's - yeah, he's bigger than he was. That just struck me immediately.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: So Kamel tells me, "The L'Apres M today, we want it to be a restaurant that is created by the people for the people, a restaurant that responds to the expectations of those who are suffering the most. And for us, the people who are suffering the most are those who sleep in the streets, in the cold, the homeless and the families who don't have enough to eat for their kids."
You know, he's feeding hundreds of families every week, Kamel. They also make deliveries to old people in the housing blocks, people who can't get out. And there was just a homeless guy living there in the L'Apres M. And he helps the team. He helps with the food handouts and all that.
WARNER: Kamel also has a new nickname.
BEARDSLEY: Abbe Kamel - because there's a famous priest in France, Abbe Pierre, who created a foundation for the homeless.
WARNER: So Abbe Pierre was the most popular person in France for quite a number of years. I guess...
BEARDSLEY: Oh, yeah.
WARNER: ...A lot of listeners will know him. But tell me who he was.
BEARDSLEY: Abbe Pierre was a Catholic priest. And he devoted his life to the homeless and the poor. He founded this organization called Emmaus, and everybody in France knows it. You know, they run soup kitchens. It's a big charity organization. You know, and he sort of rejected the pomp and the dogma side of the Catholic Church. And I was actually here. I covered his death. He died in 2007, and people just came out into the streets to pay homage to him.
WARNER: And I guess Kamel likes this nickname?
BEARDSLEY: I'm sure Kamel took it as a compliment. His eyes just twinkled, you know?
WARNER: They kind of look alike - bald head, big beard.
BEARDSLEY: It's true. Kamel does look like him. Because he had a long beard, just like Kamel. And I wonder - I didn't ask Kamel (laughter) if he maybe grew that beard because of Abbe Pierre, but yeah.
WARNER: You know, the image of sort of the Catholic priest that criticizes the lavish lifestyle of the cardinals and instead sort of says we need to open our doors to the homeless and create soup kitchens and help the truly needy, that's what it really means to be a religious figure, not these fancy robes.
BEARDSLEY: That is exactly it.
WARNER: In that metaphor, McDonald's would be the church. And he's then taking it over to run the soup kitchen in the McDonald's.
BEARDSLEY: Yeah, because McDonald's was good. It came into the neighborhood. It did give people those jobs.
GUEMARI: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: He said, "On McDonald's, for us, we're trying to turn the page because it was a trauma. When they came in 1992 to settle in our territory, they sold us a dream. That dream, we tried to make it come true."
WARNER: In the end, the success of L'Apres M will depend on the current M - McDonald's. The company has so far refused to sell this restaurant to Kamel and his allies. We called McDonald's for comment, but they declined. But Kamel says that he has been talking with the new left-wing mayor of Marseilles about a plan where the city buys the McDonald's and then sell shares to Kamel's workers' cooperative.
BEARDSLEY: And their plan is to create a restaurant with jobs that are called jobs of insertion. And that means the state pays the salaries - 90% of the salaries for the first two years. That's their plan. And then to hire back all of the former McDonald's employees who lost their jobs and other people who have been unemployed for years. That's the plan.
WARNER: Marie France, who lost her McDonald's job, she got a new job at a different restaurant chain.
BEARDSLEY: She sure did. You know, it took her years to get that job at McDonald's. And I went to see her. And she is just a new, more confident person since her stint at McDonald's. She was laughing because she said she got it after one interview. They loved her experience at McDonald's.
FRANCE: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: She told me, she said, "I'm ready to go back. If Kamel needs me, I will be there in an instant.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WARNER: Today's show was originally produced by Jess Jiang and Marianne McCune, edited by Amy Drozdowska. The update was produced by Matt Ozug with help from Oliver Riskin-Kutz and edited by Luis Trelles. Also on staff - Justine Yan and Carolyn McCusker. Many people listened to this episode and made it so much better. Thank you to Karen Duffin, Jacob Goldstein, Hanna Rosin, Sana Krasnikov (ph), Nicole Azania (ph) and Gofen Putawelle (ph). Thanks also to Kevin Beesley, Moe Decarptee (ph), Saleem Grabsee (ph), Latisha Genteelly (ph), Francesco Brashelle (ph), Mike McKune (ph) and Autumn Barnes.
The ROUGH TRANSLATION Executive High Council is Neal Carruth, Didi Schanche and Anya Grundmann. Our supervising senior producer is Nicole Beemsterboer, mastering by Isaac Rodriguez. Our theme music was composed by John Ellis with help from Eric Dew (ph). I'm Gregory Warner. Back in two weeks with more ROUGH TRANSLATION.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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