Here, the customer is more than a customer: both a volunteer but also a bit of the boss.
Opened in September, the “Super Cafoutch” supermarket now has 1,260 members.
The principle: give a little money at the start, then a little of your time each month to be able to do your shopping there.
Like La Louve, created in 2016 in Paris, on the model of the Park Slope Food Coop in New York, around fifteen non-profit supermarkets have opened in France.
From now on, Marseille also has its own.
The only obligation to be able to do your shopping: work there voluntarily for three hours a month.
To be economically viable, the structure will have to reach around 2,000 cooperators, “60% of whom would do their shopping with an average basket of 150 euros per month”, specifies the president of “Super Cafoutch”, Eva Chevallier.
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If they are indeed shareholders of the Super Cafoutch, through the purchase of ten shares for 100 euros - a single share at 10 euros for the most modest -, the return on investment expected by the cooperators is far from market logic.
Savings on payroll and intermediaries allow the supermarket to apply a fixed margin of 20% to all products.
So of course, recognizes Hugues, one of the store's three permanent employees, “the context of inflation also plays a role” in the decision to join the cooperative.
But "it goes far beyond", insists the president: "It is also a model according to which we would like our society to function, in a more collaborative, more friendly way", so that "everyone finds their account", including the producers, on whom "we will never put pressure to have the lowest possible price".
