PARIS, France – Gecina (Paris:GFC) has signed a two-year lease with Café Joyeux to set up an inclusive cafe-restaurant in a ground-floor unit at its building located at 1 boulevard de la Madeleine in Paris. This cafe-restaurant concept will occupy a 430 sq.m unit and is scheduled to open to the public from the end of the summer 2021. Thanks to this new location, Café Joyeux will be able to continue developing its activity and offer employment opportunities for 15 new crew members at this site.
Launched in 2017, the Café Joyeux cafe-restaurant concept reflects a desire to change the way people view disabilities and foster inclusion at the heart of our cities and our lives. Today, this franchise employs around 50 crew members with cognitive disabilities across its five locations.
“We are delighted to be opening up 1 Madeleine to Café Joyeux and enabling the general public to discover this original concept for an inclusive cafe-restaurant. Thanks to this socially responsible initiative, we are continuing to build on our role as an engaged stakeholder within the city to promote the integration of people with disabilities within society, while ensuring full alignment with our purpose: Empowering shared human experiences at the heart of our sustainable spaces”, confirms Méka Brunel, Gecina’s Chief Executive Officer.
“We will shortly be opening a Café Joyeux at 1 boulevard de la Madeleine, one of the most beautiful addresses in the whole of Paris, which is a great opportunity for our social enterprise and our mission to promote inclusion. Thanks to the generosity of Gecina and its teams, around 15 Joyful crew members will be able to find a job and a sustainable professional future that will change their lives.
This also proves that with a daring and generous approach, leading businesses can support the most fragile people, at the heart of the ordinary economy. This is what Gecina is clearly demonstrating here, in the same way as other companies: with Café Joyeux, solidarity can find opportunities to be expressed within the current economic system and through a good lunch and a delicious specialty coffee”, confirms Yann Bucaille-Lanrezac, co-founder of Café Joyeux.
About Gecina
As a specialist for centrality and uses, Gecina operates innovative and sustainable living spaces. The Group owns, manages and develops Europe’s leading office portfolio, with nearly 97% located in the Paris Region, and a portfolio of residential assets and student residences, with over 9,000 apartments. These portfolios are valued at 19.7 billion euros at end-2020.
Gecina has firmly established its focus on innovation and its human approach at the heart of its strategy to create value and deliver on its purpose: “Empowering shared human experiences at the heart of our sustainable spaces”. For our 100,000 clients, this ambition is supported by our client-centric brand YouFirst. It is also positioned at the heart of UtilesEnsemble, our program setting out our solidarity-based commitments to the environment, to people and to the quality of life in cities.
Gecina is a French real estate investment trust (SIIC) listed on Euronext Paris, and is part of the SBF 120, CAC Next 20, CAC Large 60, CAC 40 ESG and Euronext 100 indices. Gecina is also recognized as one of the top-performing companies in its industry by leading sustainability benchmarks and rankings (GRESB, Sustainalytics, MSCI, ISS ESG and CDP).
www.gecina.fr
