For the love of mustard: Hoarding and cheating as France grapples with nationwide shortage

Pierre Grandgirard, the owner and head chef of La Régate restaurant in Brittany, headed out on his regular morning supply run in late May when he ran into an unusual problem: he couldn’t get his hands on mustard.

“I went everywhere, but they were all out,” he explained. To make matters worse, some shopkeepers told him astonishing tales of hoarding. “That a papy (French slang for grandfather) had come in and filled his shopping carrier with 10 or more pots in one go.”

For Grandgirard, whose restaurant specialises in seafood platters and whose lunch menu also includes the traditional steak frites salade, the problem was real.

“We make our own mayonnaise and vinaigrette, and people like to have mustard with their steaks,” he said.

Finally, Grandgirard managed to find a place that still had some in stock thanks to a newly introduced “one pot per person” policy. But the staff empathised with the desperate chef and let him get away with two.

Grandgirard, whose restaurant goes through an average of 5 kilograms of mustard per month, knew the pots wouldn’t last him long. So he posted a public appeal on Facebook, begging people to please stop hoarding the condiment.

The response was massive. “People called me from everywhere, from all over Europe, and offered to send me mustard.” In all, Grandgirard said he received between 35 and 40 pots – supplies that kept him afloat until mid-July, when a fresh French mustard-seed harvest took the edge off the worst of the crisis.

A story of love, war and climate change

The French mustard crisis can largely be explained by a combination of three factors: climate change, the war in Ukraine and the extreme love the French have for the tangy condiment. 

Although France used to be a major producer of the brown-grain mustard seed known as Brassica Juncea that is the base for Dijon mustard, that cultivation has since moved to Canada, which now accounts for as much as 80 percent of the French supply. Last year’s heat wave over Alberta and Saskatchewan, which was blamed on climate change, slashed that production almost in half, leaving France’s top mustard brands – Unilever-owned Amora and Maille – scrambling for the precious seeds.

On top of that, a milder than usual winter resulted in many French mustard fields falling victim to insects, and thus producing much smaller harvests. 

The war in Ukraine has also affected the global mustard market. But the way it has affected the French is rather surprising, and is chiefly due to the mustard consumption habits of other European countries.

Although both Russia and Ukraine are big mustard-seed producers, they mainly cultivate the much milder, yellow mustard seed – a variety that is typically shunned by the French, but hugely popular in eastern and central European countries.

Since the war has halted much of the Ukrainian and Russian exports, yellow mustard-seed fans have had to turn to other types of mustards, including the much-loved French Dijon mustard, thereby upping demand.

But the main reason why France has become such a victim of the mustard shortage, according to Luc Vandermaesen, the president of the Mustard of Burgundy industry group, is because the French are simply enormous mustard consumers.

“Every French person consumes an average of 1 kilogram of mustard per year,” he told French daily Le Figaro in an interview earlier this summer. “Sales are much weaker in our neighbouring countries, and so their stocks last longer. That’s why you can find products abroad that were produced in France a long time ago.”

‘Bring me mustard!’

The French have reacted to the shortage with shock, anger and, in some cases, even desperation. Since the onset of the crisis, Twitter has been inundated with French users posting photos of empty mustard shelves in supermarkets, and at least one consumer who was lucky enough to have scored a pot joked that she was going to sell off her rare find to the highest bidder.

Aside from the many reports of hoarding, there have also been some instances of cheating to get around the caps that have been introduced in a number of French supermarkets. As reported by the Washington Post at the end of July, one scandalised French consumer even turned to TikTok to vent her anger after she learned that someone had circumvented the one-pot rule in a local shop by checking out with two different sales clerks.

One Dijon mustard fan, who said she loves it so much that she eats it on bread “like butter or jam”, recounted how, at the height of the crisis, her mother had gifted her a pot “in wrapping paper”.

The shortage has also been fodder for conspiracy theories, with some people theorising that the larger supermarket chains have purposely kept the yellow gold off their shelves to hike prices.

The internet has become a growing forum for creative ways to replace the condiment in traditional French staples, like mayonnaise, with things like vinegar, wasabi and Worcestershire sauce.

Other French consumers have simply resorted to importing their all-important Dijon via friends.

Julien Geyler, 43, from the Parisian suburb of Rueil-Malmaison received such an order when he and his family were returning from their annual summer holidays in Spain at the end of July.

“We always make a stop to see my friend’s parents on our way home, so I sent them the usual, ‘What can I bring?’ message in case they wanted something from Spain, like olive oil or Spanish ham.”

But not this time. “They just replied: ‘Mustard!’ No ‘Hello’ or ‘We’re looking forward to seeing you’, just ‘Mustard, strong mustard!’,” he laughed as he recounted his hunt for the condiment in southern Europe.

An end in sight?

After rain comes sunshine, as they say. Following last year’s depressing harvests in both France and Canada, the recent French harvests have been described as exceptionally good, and Canadian mustard-seed cultivators are looking to more than double their output this year to 115,000 tons from 50,000 tons in 2021. Most experts predict a definite end to the French mustard shortage at the end of this year.

Chef Grandgirard said he has already started to feel the impact, and no longer needs to rely on donations to be able to whip up a real mayonnaise for his guests.

“Our suppliers have been able to restock us again,” he confirmed, with a big sigh of relief.

“France without mustard is like France without wine,” he said.