Sucre Bleu!

The French didn’t invent the sugar cube, but they did help to refine it into a form better suited to coffee drinking. In 1854, Parisian grocer Eugène François patented a sawing-and-breaking method that transformed bulky sugar loaves into cubes (sucre en morceaux) ideal for dissolving in hot cups.

Over time, the sugar cube evolved into something more sculptural. Today, in Paris’s most extravagant food hall, La Grande Épicerie, an entire wall is devoted to ornamental sugar: toucans and peony bouquets rendered in sucre, boxes of miniature Eiffel Towers and croissants, blushing hearts, and amber nuggets of cane sugar sealed in glass cubes—enticingly sweet and enchanting. Beyond this rarefied world, the sugar cube persists, sharing space with bûchettes: slim, single-serve sachets that are standard and essential fixtures in corner bistrots, where espresso still tends to arrive burnt and bitter. Plumper, rectangular sachets display blotchy, pixelated renderings of the Arc de Triomphe, their paper dissolving at the slightest touch of water, while communal glass bottles of loose sugar (one brown, one white) are de rigueur in timeworn cafes, lingering on sticky zinc countertops.

In third-wave cafes, sugar is more discreet, often tucked away and reserved for those who ask—a far cry from the aprés-midi indulgences of belle-époque brasseries, where Café Liégeois (sugary coffee, coffee ice cream, chocolate sauce, and Chantilly cream) and Café Viennois (espresso crowned with whipped cream and dusted with cocoa) still hold court.

From early rough-hewn forms to today’s stylized morceaux, sugar has both shaped and been shaped by French coffee culture, mapping changes in taste and style. Sculpted, sacheted, shared, or absent entirely, it offers a small but telling glimpse into how France approaches craft, ritual, and everyday pleasures.

A short history of France and sugar

For all the joy sugar brings—gracing luxury department stores and sweetening morning coffee—it is important to remember that its path to French tables was paved with exploitation and violence. As the French-German broadcaster Arte notes in The Curse of Sugar: ‘Without sugar, there would have been no colonization of the Americas… above all, there would have been no enslavement of more than six million African men and women. This is the original sin.’

From the 17th century, France’s wealth in sugar relied on Caribbean plantations in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Guadeloupe, and Martinique, where enslaved Africans endured brutal conditions. Saint-Domingue alone supplied half of Europe’s sugar and generated two-thirds of France’s foreign trade, until its enslaved population revolted in 1791. The Haitian Revolution, which culminated in 1804 with the establishment of the world’s first Black republic, shattered France’s richest colony and sent ripples across the Caribbean, inspiring uprisings and bolstering the abolitionist cause in Europe.

The French Revolution abolished slavery in 1794, only for Napoleon to reinstate it a decade later. However, by that time, abolitionist ideas had gained traction. In Britain, campaigners urged consumers to reject sugar produced with enslaved labour, with women leading the organization of boycotts. Meanwhile, alternatives were emerging: in 1747, German chemist Andreas Marggraf discovered how to extract sugar from beets, a crop well suited to Europe’s cooler climate. As the plantation economy faltered and France’s Caribbean trade weakened due to war with England and the loss of Saint-Domingue, Napoleon threw his weight behind the development of beet sugar. By 1814, more than 300 beet-sugar factories were operating across France.

Yet abolition did not eliminate exploitation. Plantation owners shifted to engagisme, binding impoverished workers into contracts of indentured servitude that often mirrored slavery itself. As Arte underscores, this system of forced labour has never entirely disappeared, with its traces still visible in sugar production—and in many modern industries reliant on vulnerable workers. The questions we now ask about coffee (where it comes from, who grows it, and at what cost) apply equally to the sugar that sweetens it.

Sugar and coffee

From the 17th century onwards, the rise of coffee drinking across Europe fuelled a growing appetite for sugar, linking the two together alongside other bitter imports like tea and chocolate.

In 1669, Ottoman ambassador Suleiman Aga introduced coffee to the French court during his nearly year-long stay at Versailles. He staged elaborate ceremonies featuring ‘much sugar, cinnamon, and cloves well beaten,’ which, served in fine porcelain cups, according to Philippe Sylvestre Dufour in his 1685 treatise The Manner of Making Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate, gave the drink an ‘exquisite taste’. This spectacle captivated King Louis XIV and his courtiers, and the enthusiasm for Turkish fashion soon spread from Versailles into Parisian society, popularizing coffee among the aristocracy.

Coffee houses soon followed, the first being Café Procope, opened in 1686 by Sicilian immigrant Francesco Procopio. While sugar was available in these cafes, it was also sold by the ounce in apothecaries and, like coffee, was believed to have medicinal properties. Dufour claimed that coffee, when ‘taken in the morning… with a little sugar, in a moderate quantity… [was] very proper to cure indispositions of the stomach’, preventing ‘fluxes’ and helping to ‘fortify the whole body’.

Sucre Morceaux

Until the mid-19th century, sugar used for sweetening coffee and other hot drinks was predominantly sold to cafes and wealthy households in hard, conical-shaped ‘sugar loaves’. Breaking them down was laborious: early 19th-century cafe waiters had to wrestle with the stuff, hacking at the cones with pickaxes to loosen pieces, then clipping them into smaller, manageable chunks with pliers. This process created considerable waste, although the dust and shards often found new life in lemonades and syrups. Some merchants began selling pre-broken pieces in varying sizes, but most remained too bulky to slip neatly into a coffee cup.

The first real breakthrough came in 1843 when Swiss-born Jakub Kryštof Rad began pressing damp sugar into moulds and drying it to form neat, uniform cubes, marketed as ‘tea-sugar’. A decade later in Paris, Eugène François patented sawing and breaking machinery that improved efficiency, but it was Henry Tate’s large-scale production in Britain from 1875 that turned the cube into a commercial staple.

In France, however, handwork lingered. Well into the 1890s, women known as rangeuses (“sugar arrangers”) still spent long days handling and packing up to a ton of sugar daily. When wages were cut, they went on strike, and in 1892, journalist Séverine went undercover to document their plight in Les Casseuses de Sucre (in Notes of a Rebel), exposing the gruelling labour.

The art of sugar and la pause café

A winding drive through the Fontainebleau Forest, close to Paris, will take you to Ury, a village where the air smells of cut grass and caramel. The sweetness drifts from an austere metal warehouse flanked by bucolic countryside and grazing horses. This is the headquarters of Canasuc, the company behind the sculptural sucre morceaux (the toucans and peonies) displayed inside La Grande Épicerie. Since its founding in 1992, Canasuc has continued—in its own way—the Ottoman traditions of sweetening coffee, involving intricate, alluring designs.

In France, coffee drinking has always been more about the moment it shapes than the caffeine itself. Nearly three quarters of the French drink coffee regularly, with more than half consuming three cups a day. One study found that 84 per cent of employees consider la pause café (coffee break) essential to their well-being, and 90 per cent view the provision of good coffee at work as a sign that their employer values them.

While takeaway culture has made inroads in France, and not everyone has the luxury to linger, la pause café persists as a deliberately meditative interlude in most people’s days. It is even enshrined in labour law, with workers guaranteed a 20-minute break after six hours. More often than not, this break occurs more than once, and at weekends, it can extend further still—a sanctioned pleasure enjoyed on a rattan-filled terrace, leaning against a boulangerie counter, or outside a tabac.

Eva, Canasuc’s Owner and Managing Director, firmly locates her company’s artful sugars within this tradition: ‘French people like to take their time, to enjoy a long lunch or dinner, to linger over a coffee with friends,’ she says. ‘Imagine going to a very nice cafe or restaurant where the staff is friendly, the service impeccable, and the food excellent. If they bring you a very simple sugar cube with your coffee at the end, it’s a bit disappointing.’ She laughs and adds that while ‘beautiful sugar isn’t going to change your life, … with small details you can create a nice customer experience and elevate the ritual.’

This focus on elevating the everyday reflects another enduring French sensibility: the art de vivre, which emphasizes making something of the ordinary and savouring life’s smaller moments, such as good food and good company. ‘The art of French living is our inspiration,’ Eva says. ‘Using our sugar is about returning to simple pleasures—a natural product that we transform to make it beautiful. It’s both an aesthetic and gustatory pleasure.’ Investing months of skill and artisanship in creations that dissolve in seconds aligns perfectly with this attentiveness to small joys, pleasure for pleasure’s sake.

Even the way sugar is consumed in France reflects this slow, deliberate approach. The practice colloquially known as se faire un canard (‘to make oneself a duck’), involves dipping a sugar cube into coffee by hand or with a spoon, allowing it to soak just enough to sweeten the cup to one’s taste—a small, tactile flourish of indulgence.

While the French market still accounts for around 60 per cent of Canasuc’s sales, the company has also noticed an increasing demand abroad. What travels isn’t just the sculpted sugars themselves, suggests Eva, but the broader idea of slowing down and savouring that they represent. Outside of France, Canasuc is often stocked note merely as a kitchen staple but as part of a lifestyle section—art de vivre, neatly packaged.

Inside a sugar factory

French coffee culture has become more focused on craft and quality in recent years, but Canasuc has long operated this way, making sugars by hand and relying on artisanal techniques.

The factory’s plain exterior belies a Willy Wonka–esque world inside, filled with moulds, machines, and flurries of shapes and colours. In an office above it all sits Marjorie, the in-house designer, sketching ideas either in response to client requests or for the company’s own experimental projects. She tests her designs on a 3D printer, producing delicate prototypes—too fragile for production but invaluable for exploring the limits of sugar. ‘We cannot do everything with sugar,’ Eva explains. ‘We develop designs according to trends and what the sugar can withstand.’

On the factory floor, a team of eleven moves among crates ready for shipment. Stéphane, clad in goggles and a lab coat, mixes the base (white cane sugar and water, with the exact proportions kept as a closely guarded secret), tipping ingredients into vast vats. The mixture then passes to Joseph, who spreads generous scoops across heavy moulds. He presses it with a rolling pin, scrapes it back with a metal blade, presses again, clamps the mould, flips it onto a moving table, and hammers the small sugars free. The sound ricochets across the space, and what emerges are 250 neat rectangles with crisp, geometric edges. A quick spray of water helps harden them before he moves on to the next batch, repeating the process around 70 times a day, depending on the shape of mould.

Brown sugars require extra care. Their larger, damper crystals crumble more easily, and Stéphane notes that the outside temperature can make or break a batch. The same meticulous attention is applied to the colourful shapes—perhaps pink hearts or green frogs—that are made using natural plant extracts like beetroot, which alter the appearance but not the flavour.

Once moulded, the sugars spend 24 hours in a large heated room lined with trays; the scent of cane is thick in the air, and fans drone in the background. Each piece is checked by hand, and packaging—compostable individual packets—and materials are sourced in France whenever possible. ‘Our printer is very close to the plant,’ Eva says. ‘We are very reactive when we need to develop a new or bespoke product. It’s really important that the making takes place in France.’

In one corner of the factory sits an informal archive of Canasuc’s past: shelves filled with pieces that never made it to market or were eventually retired. Together, they form a catalogue of shifting tastes, from high-end collaborations to playful runs like Christmas polar bears designed to perch on miniature icebergs.

Interestingly, France’s more mainstream sugar companies have also embraced the idea of affordable luxury, reimagining their products with new shapes, sizes, and more design-conscious packaging. Saint Louis, part of Europe’s largest sugar group, has introduced its ti'Plaisir range: beet sugar pressed into hearts, diamonds, and clouds, alongside petits morceaux spécial espresso, tiny cubes sized to fit neatly in an espresso. La Perruche, in operation since the 1800s, has reimagined the cube itself, releasing a brightly illustrated box of pure canne irrégliers: small, uneven lumps designed to feel more artisanal than factory-perfect squares.

Sugar semiotics

For coffee shops, sugar has long been more than a sweetener. When Paris introduced individually wrapped cubes in 1908 as a response to stricter hygiene standards, it also created a new space for cafes to express themselves. By the late 20th century, as coffee drinking shifted from home to cafe table, small details—menu fonts, cup thickness, sugar cube design—became ways to project personality. The third-wave coffee movement has taken this even further: hand-stamped sachets, handwritten labels, and branded tote bags—all designed to convey a sense of artisanship and individuality.

Few establishments have embraced sugar with as much intent as Café de Flore in Saint-Germain. Since the interwar years, this cafe has served as a gathering place for writers, artists, and tourists, with its deep forest green sugar cubes printed with the looping words ‘Café de Flore, Saint-Germain’, matching the porcelain they accompany. The sugar has become so emblematic of the cafe that you can now purchase special Flore coupelles à sucre (sugar bowls) in its boutique.

Cafés Richard extended this concept across France. Founded in 1892 as a family roaster, the company grew not only through coffee beans but also by offering complete cafe systems, espresso machines, branded crockery, tech support, and sugar cubes in red-and-white jackets stamped with the company’s founding year. Many cafes appreciate the arrangement (it lowers upfront costs significantly), and—love it or hate it, the bitter Richard coffee has turned the sugar cube into a familiar emblem of Frenchness, scattered across counters and terraces throughout the country.

After the Second World War, paper sachets became the standard: cheaper but just as expressive. Hotels embossed crests, and cafes printed colourful scripts or local monuments. With their playful and alluring designs, who hasn’t pocketed a sugar packet as a tiny souvenir, a reminder of a perfect lunch or a city break?

In France, the sugar-pilfering impulse has evolved into something altogether more formal. The Club des Glycophiles Français (the French wrapped-sugar collectors' club), founded in 1984, still meets monthly to trade, catalogue, and discuss the artistic merits of various designs. According to their website, ‘La glycophilie’ (that is, packaged sugar collecting) is a hobby accessible to everyone.

The importance of sugar as a serious branding tool is evident in Canasuc’s order books. Most of their business comes not from retail but from luxury hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants, and high-end brands that commission bespoke designs. While Eva cannot disclose every collaboration, she mentions Pierre Hermé (the pâtisserie famous for its avant-garde macarons), whose shops serve coffee with custom-moulded sugars, and the Nouvelle Garde Group (the hospitality group modernizing brasseries across Paris), whose sugars are inscribed with a dainty ‘NG’ on each rectangle. Even Diptyque, the luxury perfumer, orders personalized sugars for the coffee served in-store. ‘The personalized touch shows clients they matter,’ says Eva. ‘It’s about creating that feeling of being valued, so they come back.’

Shifting tastes

For some in the coffee world, however, enthusiasm for sugar is waning. At Motor’s Coffee, a popular specialty shop in central Paris, owner Thomas Philips estimates that around half of customers sweeten their drinks. Old habits remain strong: ‘Starbucks opened the coffee shop era in Paris, and many people became accustomed to adding sugar to poorly roasted espresso. Changing those habits is difficult,’ he explains.

At Clove in Montmartre, another third-wave favourite, the percentage of customers who sweeten is even smaller. ‘Only a few of our customers add sugar,’ says Ella McElroy, who co-owns the cafe with Florent Marcault. ‘We love hearing that they don’t think it’s necessary! Most requests come in summer, for iced drinks. Overall, maybe five per cent of customers ask for it.’

The issue is one of quality. ‘Many people are used to dark, bitter coffee and mask that with sugar,’ Thomas explains. ‘But our long-ratio brews create delicate flavours that sugar can easily ruin.’ Clove’s Ella echoes this point: ‘Sugar can help bolden flavours or mask poorly roasted beans. But with our lightly roasted, expressive profiles, sugar often sharpens acidity instead.’

Both cafes keep sugar out of sight. ‘The sugar is not visible to customers,’ Ella says. ‘We keep it behind the bar but gladly provide it if asked.’ Motor’s places it ‘at the end of the bar’, encouraging customers to taste their coffee first. ‘We try to minimize sugar as much as possible,’ Thomas explains. ‘We do not allow sugar in pour-over or specialty espressos; we are quite firm about this and sometimes even get into heated discussions over it. For us, adding sugar without tasting the coffee is a sign of disrespect toward the product and the carefully crafted recipe.’

Both shops recognize the delicacy of the situation, though. ‘We thoroughly believe that clients should be happy with their drink and experience. We don’t want to be controlling and certainly don’t judge habits or taste preferences, so sugar is always available as an option. In French, there is a proverb: “Les goûts et les couleurs!” roughly translating to “to each his own”, which we respect!’ says Ella.

This hesitancy around sugar reflects a broader trend. Eva from Canasuc notes that her company has reduced some of their sugars from four grams to three in response to changing tastes. ‘People are using less and less sugar.’ There’s exasperation in her voice when she discusses modern diet culture. ‘Everywhere you read, you have to get rid of sugar.’ She draws a distinction between the visible teaspoon stirred into coffee and the hidden spoonfuls in processed foods. Coffee becomes the obvious target, she suggests, precisely because it’s public and measurable. As she puts it, ‘We encourage, in plein consciousness, you know, controlling what you’re doing.’

Of course, when something is denied to us or hidden away, it takes on the allure of the illicit; the thrill of the naughty. Sugar will always have its decadent attraction, particularly when it’s packaged as pretty and playful, part of the ancient theatre of coffee-drinking. And when all is said and done, French culture has never met a dietary rule it couldn’t sidestep in the name of pleasure. Whether you’re a purist protecting your pour-over, someone who stirs three sugars into their morning espresso, or the sort who keeps a stash of ornamental cubes for special guests, perhaps the best approach is to do as you please without apology. Les goûts et les couleurs, indeed.