A couple of restaurateurs from Erquy, in Brittany, summoned to court by a neighbor who was bothered by the smell of their creperie, will be summoned to the Saint-Brieuc court in February, the mayor and stakeholders told us on Friday.
Installed on the Brittany coast, the two restaurateurs, Alex Polge, 42, and Marlène Dupont, 36, indicated that “to (their) great surprise” they received on January 10 the visit of a bailiff who came to the “Odor and noise nuisance” criticized by a neighbor since taking over the creperie in December 2019.
The bailiff summoned her before the judge in the chamber of the Saint-Brieuc court on February 16.
When her restaurant opened, her neighbor, whose house adjoins the creperie, “spoke of an odor nuisance,” Alex Polge told AFP.
“We had seen each other. He said “it smells like pancakes”, I thought it was pretty good news at first, and then we said “OK, we’ll find a solution”, Mr Polge recalls.
For 17,000 euros, the couple installs a stronger extraction system and takes on the foreclosure work.
In 2022, the couple received a letter from the neighbor’s lawyer, who still complained about “an odor nuisance”, “noise nuisance, people on stones, children screaming”.
The couple is taking on new insulation work, for 150,000 euros, expanding parking spaces to keep cars away from customers.
Neighbors and restaurateurs are then summoned to arbitration, which is unsuccessful.
“I am a conflict”, assures the mayor of Erquy Henri Labbé, “I went to the creperie once, I was there around 8:30 p.m. I couldn’t see any major problems.” “The neighbor asks for the creperie to be closed at 7pm in the evening. But close the creperie in the evening and it’s over,” explains Mr. Labbé.
In terms of noise, the creperie is out of the question, according to the elected official: the Cap d’Erquy, where it is installed, is in a Natura 2000 site visited by “800,000 people a year”.
“It’s fed up, it’s like the story of Maurice the Rooster” from the island of Oléron, which woke up neighborhoods and holidaymakers every morning, explains Alex Polge.
The couple, who want to plead their goodwill in court, launched an online petition at 6 p.m. on Friday that collected more than 35,000 signatures.