By Laurent Taieb, France Managing Director for Licensing International

French cultural heritage is a licensing asset nothing else quite matches and it is finding a second life through fandom and licensing. There is one sector where the appeal of that heritage and the ability to expand it through consumer products and collaborations has been especially effective: gastronomy.

Chefs have been treated as icons for decades. Terroir has always come with a story attached and communities have formed around a bottle or a recipe long before “fandom” became a licensing term. What is new is not the culture; it is that we are finally licensing it properly.

A Category We Underrated
Food licensing has long sat on the sidelines of our conversations, somewhere behind entertainment, fashion, and sport. That is changing fast. Grocery collaborations, chef-led product ranges, and terroir programmes are carrying a brand and a story at once—this is one of the more visibly growing segments of the French market right now and it deserves more attention from the licensing community than it has had.

People buy food often, they buy it with feeling attached, and they talk about it. Few categories offer a licensing programme that kind of built-in loyalty. What used to be treated as a nice-to-have is starting to look like one of the sturdier growth engines available to brand owners.

Why Gastronomy Travels Differently
No other category provides France with this much trust already built in. A French food IP does not need to convince anyone of anything—the belief is already there, inherited from decades of reputation we did not have to build ourselves as licensing executives. A fashion brand has to make its case abroad but a culinary one mostly just has to show up.

That is closer to cultural diplomacy than to a standard export play. Every successful programme carries two things at once: value for the brand and a little more weight behind the idea of French savoir-faire generally. Few sectors do both jobs in a single transaction.

What Still Needs Building
Growth is not the same as readiness. Most food and beverage players are new to licensing as a discipline. Contracts, royalty structures, and quality control across a range of categories are things this industry has learned over decades, and in many ways food is only starting to understand those metrics. That gap is real and worth naming rather than glossing over.

It is also exactly the conversation we intend to have directly with the food industry at an upcoming professional gathering dedicated to food innovation. The Salon International de l’Alimentation (SIAL Paris) will take place in October and those meetings will result in a food-focused tradeshow where licensing will have a proper seat at the table rather than just a passing mention.

Where This is Heading
Heritage gives licensing offerings in the French food space their credibility. Fandom, meanwhile, gave them new energy. Gastronomy might be what gives them a genuine diplomatic role—a category where culture, growth, and reputation are, for once, all pulling the same way.