Flunch Brand Guidelines: The 1971 Englos Self-Service Chain of the Mulliez Family Group

A self-service restaurant in a shopping centre outside Lille.

Flunch began in 1971 in the north of France. English and French Wikipedia both place the first branch in the Englos shopping centre, on the outskirts of Lille. French Wikipedia, citing a 2015 article in the business magazine Capital, says the idea was to keep the people shopping in the centre’s arcade there at lunchtime, so that they ate on site instead of leaving. Le Journal des Entreprises, writing in January 2021, described the chain as created at Villeneuve-d’Ascq in 1971, the town east of Lille that English and French Wikipedia give as its head-office location.

Some company listings give a later date. French Wikipedia records that the present company, a société par actions simplifiée, was registered on 4 June 1981, ten years after the first restaurant opened; the brand itself dates from 1971.

The name is a compression of two English words. French Wikipedia says it is understood as a blend of “fast” and “lunch,” and the brand’s slogans, as listed by English Wikipedia, have used it as a verb: “On va fluncher,” from 1997, and later “Fluncher, c’est mieux que manger !”

Both Wikipedias say it is owned by Agapes Restauration, which belongs to the Association familiale Mulliez, the Mulliez family group. French Wikipedia lists its sister restaurant brands in that group as Pizza Paï, Les 3 Brasseurs, Amarine and So Good. In September 2024, Le Journal des Entreprises gave the chain’s head office as Lezennes, near Lille.

The restaurants are run on a self-service basis, in which, English Wikipedia says, customers help themselves to the food directly. It describes the chain as cafeteria-style fast casual dining, and French Wikipedia says most of its restaurants are in shopping centres.

A tray, a counter and a verb.

The offer is built around the counter. On its website in November 2026, Flunch puts forward its fries and vegetables “à volonté” — as much as you like — alongside dishes of the day, burgers, a children’s menu, an ice-cream menu and evening “à volonté” events. It also runs a catering service, flunch Traiteur, for private and business events, and offers delivery and group bookings. The company’s franchise page sums up its promise as “Oui au resto plus souvent” — yes to eating out more often.

The brand has tried new formats around that base. French Wikipedia, citing Capital, says that in September 2015 the company began testing a drive-through service at Englos, with orders placed through a mobile app or on screens in the shopping-centre car parks.

The identity has changed several times. French Wikipedia shows three logos: one used until 2010, a second used from 2010 to 2022, and a third introduced in May 2022. Since 2022 the name has been stylised “f!unch,” with an exclamation mark standing in for the letter l, and the company itself writes the name in lower case. French Wikipedia gives the advertising line used since 2022 as “ici, c’est permis” — “here, it’s allowed.”

The verb has a legal history of its own. French Wikipedia, citing a January 2007 report in Libération, says Flunch adapted the refrain of a popular French song as “On va fluncher” for an advertising campaign; the song’s authors went to court in 1997, and after two appeals to France’s Court of Cassation they won on 5 December 2006. The courts relied on the author’s moral right to the integrity of a work under French copyright law.

Chains, owners and documentation.

Europe’s restaurant chains grew up close to home and then went abroad. The pasta, grill, buffet, pizza, tapas and burger brands in this round come from Germany, France, Spain, Finland and Sweden, and most of them present themselves first through the room: the shopfront, the sign over the door, the counter and the way a guest orders. Vapiano built its look from a long service counter, wooden tables, basket lamps and pots of herbs, and Wienerwald was known for decades for rustic dining rooms built around roast chicken.

Menus are the second layer of identity. The companies name their signature dishes on their own websites, from fresh pasta shapes to grilled chicken, pizza, small sandwiches and burgers, and they change them when they relaunch: Vapiano’s German restaurants swapped pizza for pinsa in 2021, and the new Wienerwald added bowls and vegetarian dishes after its return.

Most of these brands grow through franchising, and their corporate pages explain founders, owners and franchise networks in their own words. Restaurant and country counts change quickly, so this guide gives each one with the date and source it comes from, and separates what independent press reports from what a company says about itself.

Ownership changes are part of the story. Several chains in this group have been sold between families, investors and larger restaurant groups, and some have gone through insolvency: Wienerwald in 1982 and again in the 2000s, Vapiano in 2020. Each guide sets out those events plainly, with dates and outcomes, and says what trades under the name today.

A safeguard procedure and a smaller network.

The chain was hit hard by the long closures of 2020. Le Journal des Entreprises reported on 27 January 2021 that Flunch, then counting 227 restaurants, 66 of them franchised, and close to 5,000 staff, had asked the commercial court of Lille to place it under a procédure de sauvegarde, a French court-supervised safeguard procedure, after six months of enforced closure. French Wikipedia, citing Le Figaro, says the court approved the procedure on 29 January 2021.

In June 2021 an agreement on job cuts was signed with staff representatives. French Wikipedia, citing Capital and La Voix du Nord, says it provided for 39 restaurants to close for good and around ten more to be taken over. In September 2024, Le Journal des Entreprises reported a further four closures that year, at Olivet, Cavaillon, Rosny-sous-Bois and Buchelay, and said the group had launched a relaunch plan with a new menu and a new way of working.

As of November 2026, the company says it has more than 130 restaurants in France, about 30 per cent of them franchised; French Wikipedia lists a presence in France, Spain, Italy and Poland. Older counts are higher: English Wikipedia gives about 180 restaurants in 2014 and more than 170 in France in 2018.

For a design guide, Flunch shows how a self-service format can carry its whole personality in a single word and a punctuation mark. Compare Courtepaille, another French restaurant chain, and Hippopotamus, the Paris grill chain. For this guide we use tomato red, mustard and cream with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Flunch’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.