Courtepaille was a French institution: a chain of roadside grill restaurants with distinctive round thatched-roof buildings and an open fireplace at the centre. Founded in 1961 by Jean Loisier, it grew to nearly 300 locations — roughly a third franchised — and became the place French families stopped for grilled steak on long drives. The formula was simple, consistent and beloved.
Between 2000 and 2020, Courtepaille changed hands six times — Accor, Barclays Private Equity, management, Fondations Capital, ICG — each transfer loading the company with more LBO debt. By 2017 revenue was declining and the chain was losing money. Then came the Gilets Jaunes protests, which kept drivers off the roads, followed by Covid-19. Courtepaille filed for receivership in July 2020. Buffalo Grill bought it out of insolvency for €17 million.
The recovery never came. Courtepaille filed a second receivership in March 2023. By then it had shrunk from 287 restaurants to 144. The second rescue, by La Boucherie, kept only 82 — and another wave of closures followed. By 2025, just 60 restaurants remained, most of them franchised. 1,500 employees lost their jobs across the two restructurings. A brand that had defined French roadside dining for half a century was reduced to a shell.
Each sale extracted value instead of investing, compounding debt until Gilets Jaunes and Covid-19 forced two bankruptcies and 1,500 layoffs.
Six private-equity owners in two decades loaded the chain with LBO debt — each sale extracted value instead of investing in the restaurants, and the debt compounded with every transfer
The brand aged without renewing itself — Courtepaille's thatched-roof, grill-in-the-fireplace concept became a nostalgic relic rather than a destination, while rivals like Buffalo Grill modernised
External shocks (Gilets Jaunes protests, Covid-19, inflation) hit a chain that was already losing money — the financial structure had zero buffer for any downturn
A beloved brand is not a viable business. When private equity extracts value without investing, the company becomes a debt vehicle — and the brand pays when shocks come.
Courtepaille's surviving restaurants — about 60, mostly franchised — continue to operate under the La Boucherie group. The company's goal is to reach 100 locations by 2030, exclusively through franchising, a fraction of its peak. The thatched-roof buildings that once lined French motorways are mostly gone, replaced by other chains or standing empty. The case is studied in French business schools as a textbook example of private equity over-leverage destroying an operating business.
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