A year ago, knowing I’m a foodie and love France, several friends and relatives sent me a wonderful article in the New Yorker by Lauren Collins extolling a buffet she’d been to in Narbonne, France, not far from Spain’s southeastern border. My brother read the same article and thought it would be fun to go, so several weeks later on April 29, 2024, we reserved a table for 2 for this past February 3, 2025. The experience far exceeded our already high expectations. If asked to describe the emotions the Les Grands Buffets experience left me with in 2 words, it would be intense happiness. Not to sound corny, but I feel a warm glow inside when I think about it. Given how outstanding and truly innovative it is, I wanted to interview the founder, Louis Privat, hoping to learn how such an extraordinary concept was inspired, implemented, evolved to the present, and what the future holds.
What Les Grands Buffets Is About
The goal of Les Grands Buffets is to introduce guests to traditional French gastronomy, educate them, and create a blissful, emotional experience of excitement, discovery, adventure, and pure joy. In these stressful times, it’s heartening and reinvigorating to embrace the best of life with friends and family, if only for an afternoon or evening.
Les Grands Buffets charges 62 Euros for an “all you wish to eat buffet” that typically takes about 2 hours. It’s a homage to the most famous and influential chef in French history, Auguste Escoffier, the chef, restaurateur, and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking. Auguste Escoffier who died at the age of 89 in 1935, was known as the “King of Chefs and Chef of Kings”. In creating Les Grands Buffets, Louis Privat sought to educate the current generation of diners from France and elsewhere, about the legacy of Auguste Escoffier and the multiple facets of traditional French fine dining he embodied in a way that’s highly accessible in price and the number of people that can experience it.
The food is about quality, range, presentation, and a feeling of abundance. Les Grands Buffet’s cheese selection breaks the Guinness Book of Records with 115 of the finest cheeses from different countries. The restaurant’s cheese connoisseur advised me to try Emanuel Macron’s favorite cheese, and the Portuguese cheese that won “The World’s Best Cheese” this year. There are 9 different types of foie gras served with a decorative flair, including an outrageously delicious foie gras crème brulé. The dessert buffet offers 50 desserts, from elaborate preparations like Floating Island with custard, meringue, and a spun sugar garnish, to comforting grandma style desserts like chocolate mousse and rice pudding. Crêpes suzettes are made to order in front of you, next to an elegant ice cream room with hand painted period walls, antique light sconces, and elaborate sorbet creations that are displayed like jewels.
There’s a flaming pressed duck presentation, a grand lobster tower, cured Spanish jamon legs that guests slice themselves, regional French dishes like frogs’ legs and
sweat breads, and Escoffier’s most famous dishes, prepared to order, including quail stuffed with foie gras and Coquilles Saint Jacques (scallops baked in its shell in a cream sauce).
The environment is spectacular. 4 elegant, themed dining rooms are decorated with both newly commissioned and collected paintings, sculptures, sterling silver pieces, stained glass windows in one room, antique maps from Napoleon’s time in another, lemon trees like in the gardens of Versailles, and beautiful table settings. For each room there’s a little brochure as you enter with an explanation of the historical period, the art and artifacts. Diners receive a map of the buffet stations and a large, grand menu, including an extensive wine list.
The Leadership Key To Success For Les Grands Buffets And All Companies
As someone who has worked on new products and innovation my entire career with large multinational companies like Disney, Pepsi-Co, and Nestlé, advised start-ups, taught entrepreneurship courses at top graduate business schools globally, written for the Forbes CMO Network about innovation for the past 11 years, and observed firsthand how organizations become truly innovative, I’ve found the single most important factor resides with the founder and her or his:
1) Vision
2) Ability to clearly communicate that vision to an entire organization and inspire employees to feel they’re part of something groundbreaking and very special
3) Relentless drive to make the product or service as good as it can be and to continuously experiment to improve it
4) Ability to tenaciously problem-solve and overcome unanticipated obstacles
Louis Privat, founder of Les Grands Buffets is a remarkable, exceptional, renaissance man, with a unique ability to cross-pollinate ideas accumulated throughout his life and apply them to his labor of love, Les Grands Buffets. The restaurant combines Louis Privat’s knowledge of theater from his days as an actor, including a great appreciation for the importance of performance, stage lighting, and music. He possesses the attention to detail, analytical mind, and love of numbers of an accountant, which makes his very unique business model possible.
Louis Privat’s knowledge of gastronomy, French cuisine and French history from in the 18th and 19th centuries is prodigious. He’s a student of art, decorative arts, and what the French call “restauración” (running a restaurant with all it entails). Louis is a curator and patron/benefactor of painting, sculpture, and decorative arts. His quest has been to spawn exceptional new art and also to develop awareness and appreciation for great works from the past. The museum quality. collection is showcased throughout the restaurant to make these works of art part of the multi-faceted, high quality dining experience, and to educate customers regarding the best of France’s legacy.
Louis applies knowledge from having worked as a medical technician early in
his career, to create innovative hygiene practices at the restaurant. He’s also a philosopher and social scientist, who is democratizing the luxury experience of fine traditional French dining, so many, not only from France, but also from
elsewhere, can for the first time understand and enjoy it. He exudes calmness, kindness, sincerity, tremendous thoughtfulness, and the attitude that anything is possible.
Substantiating And Measuring The “Most Popular Restaurant In France” Claim
The night after our exceptionally fun, happy meal of discovery, I thought about all the ways to measure the popularity and success of the restaurant. Les Grands Buffets tops all those measures.
• Number of people served: approximately 400,000 per year. Each seating,
twice a day at lunch and dinner, serves 500 people in 4 spectacular dining
rooms.
• Revenue per establishment. This year, Les Grands Buffets’ one and only
location will do $30,000,000 in revenue
• Number of reservation requests: Each year there are approximately
3,000,000 reservation requests for only 400,000 potential spots.
• Number of return visits. Estimated at around 65%, which is incredibly high
considering how many guests come from far away.
• How far in advance a restaurant is booked. As of February 2025, Les
Grands Buffets was fully booked through October 2025
• How widespread the customers come from geographically. 62% come
from more than 250 miles away including 11% from Spain
• Viral word of mouth and how many photos & videos are posted about it. Each client is a local influencer as she/he will often organize a second trip to the restaurant to introduce friends and family. Search Les Grands Buffets on YouTube and you will see pages and pages of videos.
• Amount of earned media, the type of media & the location of the media. Les Grands Buffets has been written about in travel, industry specific, and general interest media, both within the country and abroad.
• Price value perception. The price/value of Les Grands Buffets is extraordinary, not just regarding the meal, but the wines and champagne are sold at the same price as at the winemaker’s cellar, so guests don’t feel taken advantage of.
• How happy the guests are, measured by the adjectives they use to describe the experience, their facial expressions, and how intense the memories are. Just before coming to Les Grands Buffets, I mentioned to a French woman I’d met that I’d be going in a few days. Her face immediately lit up, a huge smile broke out, and she repeated over and over, “C’est magnifique”, “C’est magnifique”, “C’est magnifique”.
Les Grands Buffets, which has received many requests to franchise it, will remain a singular establishment in Narbonne, France. There are exciting plans in the works to add a grand tea salon and épicerie (food store) on the premises that will sell France’s finest regional products and provide spots within it to eat, all offered at reasonable prices. I can’t wait to experience it.
Take-Aways From France’s Most Popular Restaurant For CMO’s And Leaders Who Want To Succeed In Any Sector
Studying Les Grands Buffets and its founder Louis Privat, reveals many important success drivers:
– Leadership with a clear vision that can inspire an organization
– Leadership with a variety of skills including tremendous creativity, strong communication skills, and an obsession with analytics
– Tremendous attention to detail throughout every aspect of the customer journey
– Surprising, delighting, and exceeding expectations
– Providing experiences that can go viral and lead to great reviews
– Great price value
– Cross-pollination of ideas from other categories beyond what’s typically done in a sector
– Establishing comprehensive success metrics and measurable objectives beyond the obvious