
La Ruche qui dit Oui - jpkenobi
http://avc.com/2015/06/la-ruche-qui-dit-oui/
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lotharbot
Summary: this is something akin to a farmers market with pre-orders. Consumers
order local produce, farmers and consumers all arrive at a pre-determined
location and time for delivery, and farmers keep most of the money (with a
small cut going to the location owners, and a cut going to the company that
handles all the market-making/financial transactions.)

At present, this exists only in Europe, but it sounds like a US expansion
might be possible.

~~~
codingdave
No need. CSAs have existed throughout the US for a long time. Wrapping them
under a single brand and adding in a middle man to handle the transactions
doesn't really add value to the consumer.

~~~
lotharbot
I hadn't heard the term "CSA" before. Interesting.

[http://www.localharvest.org/csa/](http://www.localharvest.org/csa/)

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morsch
I just tried it, the whole process is a bit confusing. There's no
store/location ("assembly") in my city (Germany), but my s/o lives in a
somewhat more hip city which has a few.

To get any details for any individual assembly -- including finding out what's
for sale! -- you need to register (full name, password and email). After
registering, you still need to "join" each assembly individually before you
see any goods, which feels a bit weird: I thought I was shopping for
groceries, apparently I'm now in some sort of club. Or rather three clubs: the
first two I tried had nothing for sale, which almost had me give up, but the
third one does have some stuff:

A variety of vegetables, ranging from very to extremely expensive, think 2 to
4x of what you'd pay in a regular supermarket -- I guess they're artisinal or
something. But the potatoes I bought earlier today were the same kind, also
sourced from the region, and still cost half of what they're asking. They do
have a huge variety of tomatoes, and I'd be happy to pay 3x the regular price
for a tomato with an actual taste.

Apart from the veggies, that assembly also has wine and bread for prices that
are average for good quality stuff, and overpriced chutneys and condiments,
the kind you only buy as a gift.

This is not a terribly convincing display, to be honest, but I imagine the
experience is very different in France, where they seem to have a much higher
concentration of assemblies. Not completely different, though, since I can't
imagine they have any chance of competing on price -- the regular food retail
chain is bound to be ruthlessly efficient in that respect.

The whole concept has the huge downside that you have to pre-order AND be at
the assembly location at a specific time, compared to the supermarket (no pre-
order required, open all the time), the farmer's market (no pre-order
required, open more often than any single assembly) or, I guess, web
deliveries (though I don't intend to order a tomato from the web, ever).

~~~
jtheory
There's one not far from me, so I may look into it. Well, 20 min... far enough
that "drove 40 minutes to pick up local produce" starts to sound dumb, though.
I'm in central France.

But in context -- it's not hard to find local produce, including plenty of
local, organic produce, without relying on a specially-organized meetup point.
The closest large town to where I live has about 8K people; that's big enough
for them to have a (smallish) dedicated organic/specialty grocery store, and
street markets every weekend, year-round, with a few organic farms selling
their produce there.

If I drive into Limoges, there are several large grocery stores that sell only
organic produce, and highlight local produce.

These are all noticeably more expensive than shopping at a regular Super-U or
Casino/Geant (big chains), but the selection and quality is quite good.

I'll check into the Ruche near here to see what it's like; but if it's the
same farmers we can buy from directly at the weekend market, I'm not sure I
see the point.

Edit: "276 Membres"... Huh -- that's significant. Oddly, the producers include
a "Safranier", i.e., a saffron farmer. I didn't think that could even grow
here.

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InclinedPlane
This is pretty common in the US, it generally goes under the name "community
supported agriculture" (CSA) or "farm-shares". People usually pay a yearly fee
or pay a monthly subscription and get a weekly box of produce and whatnot
mostly from one or a few local farms.

~~~
stangeek
No, it's not the same at all. Here you get to select online the product you
want to buy, you are not "forced" to receive a box of produce. And there is no
monthly fee at all, you just pay for what you buy.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Apologies if I elided mention of how they are different, I didn't mean to do
so. This sort of thing is a pretty big innovation and offers the potential to
increase the reach of direct to consumer local farm produce sales.

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yenda
I have been using this service for a year. It's nice. Definitely more
expensive than going to the supermarket but the food is way better. We have to
eat less and more healthy anyway.

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vinceguidry
> How can we get back to a time when the food we eat is produced nearby, is
> high quality, and is healthy?

That time never existed. Factory farms and food processing have historically
represented huge improvements in safety as well as affordability and
availability. Not that this isn't a great idea, just that it's not a return to
any kind of wonderful world of plenty.

~~~
gt565k
What?

[http://www.localharvest.org/csa/](http://www.localharvest.org/csa/)

~~~
jpatokal
He's not saying that variations of "a marketplace that connects farmers to
people who want farm fresh food" doesn't exist. He's saying that this mythical
utopia where everybody ate locally-produced, high-quality, healthy food didn't
exist.

~~~
cactusface
I don't know, I wouldn't say the downsides of the old ways were that the food
was non-local, low quality, or unhealthy. A lot of the food regulations were
necessary because when you try to do things on a large scale you run into
quality and health problems. The downsides are more like people ate way less
meat because it was too expensive, there was much less international variety,
and there were a lot more farmers, like 25x more. It's really hard to be a
farmer. That said, I think the typical person nowadays can afford to eat much
better than your typical peasant in the past, at a lower total percentage of
income. It's just that because there's so much to spend money on in life now,
today's typical peasant chooses not to eat better and ends up romanticizing
the past.

~~~
jpatokal
The main point you're missing is that people were _tied_ to local produce.
Cold snap during summer? Potato blight? Sorry, you're going to starve. Even
when the harvest came through, staying healthy through the winter and spring
was a major problem, with all sorts of vitamin deficiency diseases like
scurvy, beriberi, pellagra and rickets endemic.

~~~
cactusface
There's definitely more food now. Most of it is lower quality than what was
eaten before, when it was eaten of course. For survival reasons, I would
choose availability over quality any day. However, we have more than enough
food to survive, so much so that we throw it away. So maybe quality could go
up a bit. Like say by banning the use of antibiotics and growth hormones in
milk producing cows.

~~~
maxerickson
Antibiotics are banned in dairy cows (at least, in the US and EU). They can be
used to treat illness, but the milk produced while they are used must be
discarded.

Growth hormones are banned in the EU, not in the US, but many US dairy
producers advertise the fact that they produce milk without using them.

~~~
cactusface
Sorry, I thought there were antibiotics in US milk.

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julioademar
We built [http://www.attmatr.com](http://www.attmatr.com) with a similar
philosophy. The difference is we strive to actually be farm-to-table as we
deliver to the customer's doorstep - and our platform caters to B2B too. We're
only in Denmark at the moment but will soon expand abroad.

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Kototama
In France there is the AMAP association ([http://www.reseau-
amap.org/](http://www.reseau-amap.org/)) which shares some of the same goals,
but for non-profit and with a focus on organic products.

~~~
draven
The AMAPs are subscription based, and you get a box (panier) with whatever the
farmer happens to have this particular week.

Here you can actually order things.

In the case of AMAPs, the nice thing about not knowing what you'll receive in
advance is that it forces you to learn a certain number of recipes so you'll
be able to cook whatever you get.

~~~
drewm1980
We are part of a similar subscription based system here in Belgium. Prices are
somewhere between supermarket normal and organic. Mostly local, but some stuff
is shipped in when the local crops really suck. Indeed forces you to learn to
cook and enjoy whatever weird stuff happens to be growing well locally. This
results in less effort deciding what to buy, but more effort figuring out what
to do with whatever you received. I really don't think giving consumers ~more
choice is going to help solve the problem of getting people to eat whatever is
growing locally.

~~~
draven
I used to live in Grenoble, and some local AMAPs offered some cooking classes.
You could choose to take your basket to a kitchen and people helped you with
cooking and canning your vegetables. It takes a little more involvement from
the consumer but then they only have to reheat what they've cooked, and they
don't have to consume their weekly basket immediately.

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highCs
I'm happy to read a french startup has access to top talents outside Europe. I
wish them the best.

Oh and it's here:
[https://laruchequiditoui.fr/en](https://laruchequiditoui.fr/en)

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brianbreslin
Who in the US is doing similar? I read an article about japanese fishermen
doing this recently on wsj

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/startups-upend-japans-fish-
marke...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/startups-upend-japans-fish-
market-1431682201)

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bshimmin
Is the name a play on "La vache qui rit"?

~~~
jtheory
I'd assume not -- because la vache qui rit is sort of the French version of
American cheese (a factory-produced cheese-based product, not an actual
cheese), so it's not really the sort of thing they'd want to be associated
with.

The name is ringing a vague bell -- maybe there's a childrens' story about a
talking hive? No idea, but a quick google didn't find the answer either, so I
can't say for sure.

~~~
neutralino1
Most French people love La Vache qui Rit. They don't eat it as adults but it
revives memories of their school trip lunches.

~~~
jtheory
Sure; it's not considered an evil thing generally; it's just that the
subculture of people who go out of their way and pay more to get
organic/local/etc. generally aren't eating much of it: they're paying more for
the AOC-certified, locally-produced real cheese.

They're also (in my experience) buying a ton of homeopathic remedies for just
about everything, which I have trouble not rolling my eyes about, but that's
another subject.

