It's in 1958, soon after his father pasted away, that Francis Holder took over the family bakery in Lille and started developing it: fifty years later, the renown of Paul bakeries speaks for itself, and the group counts more than 330 bakeries all over the world.

In 1998, the group decided to give the development of Paul in franchise for the Middle East to SOFRACE, and since the first opening in Beirut in 2000 more than 20 points of sale have opened in the area (UAE, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuweit, Qatar).