South Korean consumers have urged a boycott of Paris Baguette, a bakery chain known for its fruit-filled pastries and decorated cakes, after a young woman was crushed to death at work.
The 23-year-old employee was operating a sauce mixing machine alone on a graveyard shift on October 14 at one of the company’s factories. During her shift, she got pulled into the appliance and her crushed body was found in the machine the next day by her colleagues.
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The factory resumed production the very next day, and employees who saw and pulled their co-worker’s mangled body out of the machine were required to work next to the accident site.
The callous response and alleged safety lapses—critics say the machine should have been operated by two people—have prompted protests and boycotts in South Korea against Paris Baguette and its parent company, SPC Group.
“Don’t ever buy or go to the murderous Company SPC!” said the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a national trade union center in South Korea, on their official Twitter account.
Tags with phrases such as “SPC boycott,” “SPC killer company,” and “No-buy movement” were trending on South Korean Twitter, with some posts amassing thousands of retweets.
A day after South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered an inquiry into the employee’s death, SPC Group chairman Huh Young In publicly apologized at a press conference, saying that asking employees to go back to work on the site of the accident was wrong and “inexcusable.” SPC released an apology letter on Oct. 17.
The company also pledged to spend 100 billion won (about $67 million) over three years to improve worker safety, SPC President Hwang Jae-bok said on Friday.
SPC Group, a South Korean food conglomerate that owns Paris Baguette and operates large global brands in the country, has repeatedly come under fire for its poor labor practices.
Just a week before the unnamed woman died at work, an employee’s hand got caught in another production line machine. But the company did not send the worker to the hospital for treatment because the employee wasn’t a full-time worker, the Korea Times reported.
In May, a group of activists protested the SPC Group for allegedly failing to provide women employees with their basic labor rights. Though about 80 percent of Paris Baguette bakers are women, demonstrators claimed that they aren’t guaranteed one-hour lunch breaks, annual paid holidays, and menstrual leave, South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh reported.
With more than 4,000 locations globally, Paris Baguette is a rapidly growing business.
According to the American business publication Franchise Times, Paris Baguette’s U.S. franchise is No. 25 on its ranking of the 500 largest U.S.-based franchise systems by global sales, just after Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen and Panera Bread.
The company plans to open 1,000 locations in the U.S. by 2030. On the day of the employee’s death, SPC Group announced it’d open its first Paris Baguette in the UK.
In South Korea, SPC Group also operates international brands like Shake Shack and Baskin Robbins.
