Pall Center: Christianne Wickler will no longer be alone at the head of the group

August 5, 2025. The sky seems to have finally turned the page of the gray days which have dominated until then this month of August. At the beginning of the afternoon, the sun’s rays caress the skin with summer softness. It is in this peaceful light that Christianne Wickler lends himself to the portrait game, posing surrounded by her two daughters, Ann and May, in front of the lens of our photographer.

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An image loaded with symbols, captured in front of a decor which owes nothing to chance: the petrol pump of the Oberpallen Pall Center. Installed there since 1982, it embodies the origins of this entrepreneurial adventure whose success is not discussed. This place, modest and founder, stands out as the ideal setting to illustrate the passage of relays which is taking shape today.

From September, Ann (35) and May (27), but also their brother Noé (30 years old), will indeed join their mother at the management of a group which is now spread over seven sites and which employs more 250 employees.

May, Christianne and Ann in front of the famous Oberpallen service station. © Photo: Mar

“At four, we will share the tasks. And that, according to everyone’s desires and skills, “says a Christianne Wickler (65) who says he is” happy “of this evolution desired by her children.

But also, she adds, “happy to know the business in good hands for the future”. Because if she remains present, she now leaves her children to decide, build, extend history.

Everything started from a vacant lot

A story, born 43 years earlier, therefore, on a vacant lot that his father, Mathias, had acquired. Entrepreneur, he had perceived the potential of this landing of earth, posed seven kilometers from Arlon, by the side of a road which he took every day. Christianne Wickler is only 22 years old, no higher education, but raw energy and a forged intuition in the family business. And then there is this passion for childhood for trade, born in the cabinets of her mother where she played the grocer.

No gift, no passage: this service station is not a present, but a challenge. She will have to pay it, manage it, and above all, make it grow. If the first months are difficult, success will not be long in hitting. Result, two years after the opening, Christianne passes from pump attendant to trader.

L’ADN Pall Center

After having reimbursed her father, she thus transforms the 25 square meters of her small shop into a 600 square meter grocery store, accompanied by a cafeteria where her customers can sip coffee. Admittedly, the approximately 6,000 square meters of Oberpallen’s current installations are still far, but the DNA of the Pall Center is already there.

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Between instinct and strategy, it develops a niche trade, where the giants (of distribution) do not go. The race for promotions in its first years of existence, the craft and local side of organic products, flowers, quality clothes for adults or children, etc. And that, by creating places where you don’t just go shopping, but also drink coffee, stroll, chat or simply land. “When my friends ask me what I do, I tell them I have a hotel where people don’t sleep,” says Ann, her daughter. A definition that regulars will not contradict.

Oberpallen’s Pall Center is like no other store. Nestled on the edge of the village, it was built with a simple, but strong idea: not to disturb, but enrich the village. Christianne Wickler did not want a “parking lot with floors”, nor an “American Mall”. She wanted a place on a human scale, a space that breathes, that respects.

Always green but more greed

We are necessarily there the influence of the former ecological bourgmestre of the town (and former minister), Camille Gira (in office for 23 years, who died in 2018). “We developed it together,” confirms the one Gira had convinced himself to go into politics for the 2013 legislative elections.

Solicited regularly to open new stores, she has often preferred to refuse. © Photo: Mar

Christianne Wickler will not remain deputy only nine months. The time of a pregnancy not really desired, will say some. “The situation made me sick. I felt unable to lead my political and professional objectives. I felt like I was dropping those who believed in me on both sides, ”comments the one who keeps the ecological soul today, but without affiliation to a dei party who disappointed it.

The “Woman Business Manager of the Year” from 2007 and president of the Federation of Business Cheffes from 2012 to 2019 then plunges exclusively into its professional world. Solicited regularly to open new stores, sometimes in urban areas or with high commercial potential, she has often preferred to refuse. True to a prudent vision of which we often affute people from the north of the country, like her. “I never wanted to put myself on the knees of a banker,” she laughs. She feared to build too large, too quickly, at the risk of leaving her children the weight of a wasteland to decontaminate.

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The turbulence of recent years

A group that grew up in a “organic” way, as defined by its founder. “As soon as we had a penny, we reinjected him into the business,” she says. She also declined all buyout proposals. Many would probably have taken advantage of this exit door, especially after the turbulence of recent years.

Two affairs signed up her image: her support for a covid-skeptical site when she had just been appointed president of Cargolux, and a complaint (still in progress) of her ex-financial director, who called into question her management. “Two affairs that pulled me with energy,” she said. “Fortunately I felt my family and my business behind me.”

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Oberpallen’s Pall Center is like no other store. © Photo: Mar

His business and family

His family and his business, the two gravitational poles around Christianne Wickler. One pretending to nourish the other and vice versa. And that, even if she concedes him without blinking: her professional life has often taken precedence over her private life. “We were not on 40 hours/week,” she says. Rather over seven days a week, without parental leave or maternity. “My last one, May, was born on a Thursday. And on Saturday, I was already back. We had an inventory that day … “, she says. A scene that alone sums up the Pall Center spirit: life, work, family, all intertwined.

Christiane Wickler does not speak of sacrifice, but of habitus. A way of living, thinking, working. His children say they don’t have suffered from it. On the contrary, they had an explosive to grow on the shelves, above the offices, between the inventories and the boxes. A family business as a living environment.

Today, Christianne Wickler takes a step aside. Not to withdraw, but to transmit. She gives the keys to her children, but stays there, in support, a benchmark. Because you will understand, the Pall Center and its children is all its life.

“My accountant told me one day that on my tombstone, it will be written: ‘Here rests Christianne Wickler and the Pall Center remains open’,” she smiles. Not sure that one day we find a better formula to define it.

The big brother is a starred chef

Christianne Wickler has four children from two different marriages. We present them to you:

• May (27 years old): graduate in work psychology and current “Project Manager” in Munich, she is trendy operational and events.

• Noé (30 years old): already present for ten years in the group’s technical service. His sisters define as the “MacGyver of the Pall Center”.

• Ann (35): graduate in anthropology, she worked in the hotel industry in Copenhagen, Berlin or Zurich. She also exercised her talents in the press field, for the Condé Nast group, on the Munich side. And especially Vogue.

• Mathieu (37): The eldest son who does not work in the group’s fold. And for good reason, he is a chef at the Apdikt restaurant in Steinfort. And it is star in the Michelin guide.