Jacques Borel

Jacques Borel (born 9 April 1927) is a French businessman. In 1961, he brought fast food to France with a franchise of Wimpy, and opened restaurants in Paris and other cities before the company's head office shut them down at the end of the decade. He pioneered Ticket Restaurant (now Edenred) in 1962. In 1969, he opened France's first roadside restaurant. He set up a consultancy in 1994 to lobby for value-added tax reductions for restaurants.

Early life Borel was born on 9 April 1927 in Paris. At 13, he worked as a courier sending messages between fighters in occupied and Vichy France, and he met his future wife at the liberation of Paris in 1944, when he was 17. A graduate of HEC Paris in 1950, he completed his apprenticeship in management positions at IBM, where his father, William Borel, headed the French branch. Jacques Borel led IBM in Vietnam during the French colonial period. His portfolio expanded to 15 restaurants in Paris and five in the rest of the country, but they disappeared before the end of the decade due to disputes with head office in the UK; McDonald's then came to France in 1972.

In 1962, Borel pioneered Ticket Restaurant (now Edenred), vouchers sold to large employers to feed employers instead of using their own cafeterias. He had discovered the practice in the UK. By 1967, the practice was recognised by the state and no taxes were required on it. In 1968, he sold 65% of his company to American conglomerate W. R. Grace in order to finance future growth; this share reduced to 15.2% by 1977.

After failed experiments in fast food in the United States, Mexico and Brazil, he returned to France and opened Jacques Borel Consultants in 1994, who successfully lobbied for a reduced value-added tax of 5.5% in French restaurants. For his role in fast food, newspaper France-Soir called him "public enemy number one". He was the inspiration for the character Jacques Tricatel in the 1976 French film The Wing or the Thigh (L'Aile ou la Cuisse), based on the confrontation between traditional French cuisine and fast food at the time.