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A discount on Nutella has led to violent scenes in a chain of French supermarkets, as shoppers jostled to grab a bargain on the sweet spread.

Intermarché supermarkets offered a 70% discount on Nutella, bringing the price down from €4.50 (£3.90) to €1.40.

But police were called when people began fighting and pushing one another.

"They are like animals. A woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady took a box on her head, another had a bloody hand," one customer told French media.

A member of staff at one Intermarché shop in central France told the regional newspaper Le Progrès: "We were trying to get in between the customers but they were pushing us."

Similar scenes have been reported across France, with some being described as "riots"

Some 365 million kilos of Nutella is consumed every year in 160 countries around the world.

It was created by the Ferrero family in the 1940s in the Piedmont region of Italy, which is famed for its hazelnuts.

The firm said it regretted Thursday's violence, but noted that the discount had been unilaterally decided by Intermarché.
The Cut reports:

On Thursday, devotees of the milk chocolatey hazelnut spread reportedly broke into riots when word got out that the beloved condiment was on sale at French supermarkets. (The French are the second biggest consumers of Nutella - Germans are the first - and the French apparently consume 100 million jars a year.)

In the Northern French town of Ostricourt, police were dispatched to handle fights. In the Loire Valley, a store's entire stock disappeared in minutes and a customer ended up with a black eye. And in Southern France, shoppers threw themselves on a worker carrying Nutella, according to reports.

The Local reports:

We would prefer not to do it. It's more of a nuisance than anything else," they said before comparing the scenes to the Battle of Berezina fought between the French army and Russia in 1812.

"There were lots of people, lots of noise, but the reports of violence were surprising to me -- they're not true."Today, I solved the problem by limiting the number of pots to three per person. But they went back and forth," he said.

At the Montbrison store on Thursday morning, 700 pots of Nutella disappeared in three quarters of an hour and the supermarket is planning to repeat the discount on Friday and Saturday. In 2016, a couple were banned from calling their daughter Nutella by French courts, with judges saying the child would be mocked as she grew up.

"Some customers came the night before the promotions to stash the Nutella pots in other places, and thus prevent others from taking them," Jean-Marie Daragon from the Intermarché in Montbrison, central France.




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