It's not a very good example, because making food halal requires businesses to change the way they do things. One of the things required for food to be halal (AFAIK) is that the person doing the slaughtering must be Muslim. I can see how this requirement would prevent most businesses from "making all things halal", just by itself.

Besides, France's population is 5 to 10 percent Muslim, which negates the "three to four percent" 'dictating' claim of the article, especially because, last time I visited France, most meats I saw weren't halal.

My understanding of halal is that an easy way for food to be halal is to be vegetarian (in the ovo-lacto sense) and to contain no alcohol.