Just Queen, a pioneer of automatic pizza distributors in France, and who had placed himself under the protection of the Commercial Court on July 3, is now in compulsory liquidation. The decision was made on Wednesday, July 23, by the Commercial Court of Dijon, according to France Bleu on Wednesday, July 23, ratifying the cessation of activity of the company. The fate of the API Tech subsidiary will be sealed this Monday, July 28. In all, more than 500 jobs would be threatened by these closures. Without buyers by early August, the company will not have the resources necessary to continue.
Difficult accounts to balance despite rapid growth
Created in 2021 under the aegis of the Mentor group, the company operated around 800 automated pizza distributors in France, including more than ten in the department, and 23 laboratories located, among others, in Meurthe-and Moselle, in the Vosges and Moselle and Saint-Apollinaire. Since June, Internet users have reported failures on the terminals, with breakdown, abandoned, and unpeated installations. The workshops, on the other hand, were stopped due to liquidity.
Thus, in a very degraded financial context – notably due to an absence of bank support according to the president of Mentor, Benoît Michaux – the brutal stop of Just Queen marks the failure of an initially promising concept: fresh pizzas in three minutes, available 24 hours a day via ATMs. But this model struggled to balance its accounts despite rapid growth in Champagne -Ardenne, Lorraine and Côte – D’or. According to figures, available on Pappers.fr, the brand suffers from a bad financial balance with massive operational losses, increasing debt, and under tension.