In Erquy, in the Côtes d’Armor, a couple who own a creperie had the unfortunate surprise of being the target of a complaint filed by one of their neighbors. He can’t stand the smell of pancakes anymore.
Oh Brittany! Sea air, rain and pancakes! One can imagine that it is good to live there, especially when a creperie is located close to home and that one could feast there daily.
However, this is not the case of a man who decided to sue the couple who own the nearby creperie because of the smell of crepes emanating from it.
The case takes place in Erquy, a commune of Côtes d’Armor, where Marlène and Alexandre are prosecuted for noise and olfactory nuisances. Owners of a crêperie called “La Crêperie du Pêcheur” which they took over in 2019, they are now struggling to be able to keep their establishment following repeated complaints from a neighbor , inconvenienced by the activity of the crêperie.
The neighbor, retired, had his second home built in 2000, before settling there permanently. Next door was then a villa, which became a creperie in 2009: “It’s a Natura 2000 site. The decision to transform the house into a creperie by the previous owner was made behind my back, with the town hall” , he explains. he with the Telegram.
When Alexandre and Marlène take over the establishment, “the dream of a lifetime” comes true. A few weeks after the reopening in early 2020, after a few months of work, they undergo the first confinement, before going through the first summer season with the health pass: “When we inaugurated, we invited the whole neighborhood. Everyone came to see us. Except this neighbor who never goes out. His wife once reproached me for using a blower to clean my garden and reproaches the delivery trucks for parking on the sidewalk, when they are not in the way,” confides Alexandre in the columns of the Telegram.
The dispute officially dates back to August 2019 when they received a first letter from the neighbor. He complains of the noises of employees, dishes, cars, and the smell of pancakes and frying: “We met. We took all the points from the list. First of all, we don’t fry. He said he couldn’t open his windows because of the smell of pancakes. Another neighbor also told me that there was a smell of pancakes, but we’re not talking about pig manure there. We just go to court because we make pancakes in Brittany” laments Marlène.
For his part, the neighbor defends himself on the merits of his complaint: “The victim is me. I would never have gone to such legal proceedings if there weren’t so much nuisance, abnormal disturbances. It’s my physical and mental health that is at stake. I’m the only one to have my rooms a few meters from this extractor which makes a lot of noise. All summer, when the small children are there, we have to have the windows closed because of the fumes. It is unlivable. The other neighbors say nothing because they are afraid” .
At first, in order to satisfy the neighbor’s complaint, the couple therefore began work. He has a smoke extractor installed, asks customers to park further away, moves the dishwashing room to the other side. They also plan to install a new veranda to isolate noise from the terrace, raising the bill to 170,000 euros.
But in the end, the neighbor is still not satisfied: “Stopping all noise and odor nuisance, closing the car park and stopping activity at 7 p.m., that’s what the other restaurant is doing which opened 100 meters further” , he proclaims.
Thus, the showdown continues and the restaurant couple has decided to launch an online petition to support their cause. Entitled “A creperie that smells of crepe”, it collected more than 13,000 signatures. At the legal level, they are summoned on February 16 next to the court of Saint-Brieuc after the failure of the conciliation process.