Acrelec is first and foremost a meeting between Jacques Mangeot and Jalel Souissi, two former McDonald’s employees. “We met in 1989 in Chicago when we were both working for McDonald’s on a huge project” recalls Jacques. A few years later, after observing evolutions in the QSR (Quick service restaurant) industry, they decided to buy Acrelec, a 10 employees’ company that was manufacturing robust equipments for the electrical industry. We are in 2004 and the word “digital” doesn’t exist yet but this is exactly what they are aiming to do by providing innovative technology solutions to reimagine the customer experience in restaurant and retails brands.
From their humble beginnings, they remember this call for bids from a major French company for which they decided to install their prototype right where everyone in that company had their coffee break while the competition brought 10 representatives to do a PowerPoint presentation for their proposal. “It was just Jalel and I with our prototype ready to take orders and we thought we lost it, but we received a call the next day that we had won the bid!”
Fast forward to today, Acrelec counts over 40,000 installations around the world (ironically enough a lot of them can be found at McDonald’s) in 70 countries and over 800 employees, has 2 manufacturing plants, a 60 people software division. But its success relies on the very same approach, a customer centric mindset that allows the company to move fast in order to adapt to the ever-changing customer needs.
In 2020, Glory Global Solutions invested in $223 million in Acrelec capital.