For several days, they have been hoeing, pulling weeds and ... designing new projects. At Topager, creator of urban vegetable gardens and winner of the Paris City Hall Parisculteurs 1 call for projects, confinement will not have been completely lost for two months.
If the distribution of baskets of fruit and vegetables grown on the 2,500 square meters of roof of the Bastille Opera (IVe), had to turn to a clientele other than the site employees confined to their homes, during the health crisis , these micro-adaptations and the idle exploitation of cultivated sites did not put Topager's teams on technical unemployment.
"We continued the activity: no choice, cultures do not wait!" even if some sites like the Ehpad, where corporate offices have been put in brackets since the premises were prohibited, "says Frédéric Madre, co-founder of Topager.
About fifteen projects per week
The workload increased by “the wild grasses that grow in all directions” risks being all the heavier with the distance instructions. "Where we worked with 4-5 people, there is only one or two," says Frédéric Madre.
Beyond these organizational contingencies, Topager has rather seen its activity ... increase during confinement. “We have received many requests for the development of new sites. We were a little surprised at first, we were rather afraid that everything would end! But obviously people in charge of projects of this kind in companies also had more time to work on these files and sent us their requests, ”recalls the entrepreneur. While the team usually receives a dozen new projects per week, during confinement, "we received more than fifteen," notes Frédéric Madre.
With a major difficulty: the impossibility of going on site to study the configuration of the premises. "It's complicated but with Google Map and the photos that our customers have sent us, we have managed," explains the owner.
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From now on, between new projects and delays in the development of construction sites launched such as that of the Saclay plateau, whose planting has been delayed, it is rather with the organizational schedules that Frédéric and his team will have to juggle.