It was not quite the Louvre heist, but for a village in northeastern France, the recent theft of more than $100,000 worth of escargot from a local farm, just as prime holiday snail-eating season begins, was pretty close.
The family that owns the business believes that the target — and especially the timing — suggest that whoever did it had an insider’s knowledge of the esoteric escargot industry.
The French eat about 37 million pounds of snails every year, according to the National Heliciculture Federation of France, which represents snail farmers. Much of this consumption happens around Christmas and the New Year, as evidenced by the inevitable annual appearance of holiday escargot recipes in French magazines.
The heist appears to have been timed to coincide with this period of exceptional demand.
“Escargot is a quite rare dish. It is pricey and is usually served for Christmas or big events,” said Inès Dauvergne, 20, who works in her family’s snail enterprise and whose father, Jean-Mathieu, discovered last week that they had been robbed of almost their entire holiday stock.
“We think they were people who know — a connoisseur or professional — to be able to steal one year’s worth of stock at just this time,” she said.
On Nov. 24, she said, her father went to work as usual at L’Escargot des Grands Crus, the business his parents started in 1999. It now consists of a snail farm, shop, labs and kitchens, and that morning, it was obvious as soon as he arrived that something was amiss.
The door of the shop was open. The doors to the kitchens and the labs, where cooking and cultivation experimentation happen, were also open, and drawers in the office were emptied of petty cash. Most alarming, nearly all the escargots — 990 pounds of fresh and frozen snails — were gone.
That stock was meant to get them through the high demand of the holiday season. “Just before Christmas, we find ourselves without much,” Ms. Dauvergne said.
The police have no suspects yet, she said, and the family is scrambling to contend with the loss.
The Dauvergnes are among only several hundred snail farming families in France, where the supply of the mollusks in the wild has been depleted, regulations limit gathering them, and cultivation does not meet demand.
People have been eating snails for at least 170,000 years, and snails have been a snack in the Mediterranean for about 30,000. They are relished in Italy, Spain, North Africa, parts of Asia and the Caribbean.
Much of the growth in the global snail market, valued at about $700 million annually by some estimates, is driven by demand for the mollusks in skin care. Snail mucin is hot in Korean beauty products, a booming international business, as well as in pharmaceuticals and in food.
In France, local growers account for only about 5 percent of the market, according to the national snail farming federation. Small French snail producers say they struggle against bigger producers abroad and face tricky conditions. During Covid lockdowns, for example, critical holiday sales plummeted.
The Dauvergnes produce about 350,000 snails annually, selling them online, in markets and to high-end clients like Le Parc, a restaurant with two Michelin stars in nearby Reims. They are part of a network of cultivators serving the regional businesses that cater to the many wine tourists passing through. Their snail farm is itself a tourist attraction, promising an escargot tasting and a presentation on cultivating mollusks.
Because it takes about a year for snails to reach maturity, there is no way to make up for the losses from the theft in time for the Christmas rush, Ms. Dauvergne said. Fellow snail raisers have shown “solidarity,” she said, offering supplies to help the family meet its contractual obligations.
The family learned of the world’s interest in their plight after customers told them of news reports from across France, Europe and Asia. Ms. Dauvergne said she hoped that people hearing her family’s story would support other small businesses and farmers.
There was one bright spot, she noted.
The producer snails, which lay eggs, were not taken in the theft, perhaps because they cannot be sold for immediate consumption. The family can plan on cultivating and raising a new supply of escargot.
“Next year, if the season is good,” Ms. Dauvergne said.
Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering breaking news around the world. She is based in Washington.
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