• The Rennes start-up Urban Cuisine has been named in the “Hope of the Year” category at the Made in France trade fair, which is being held this week in Paris.

  • Its two founders have developed a connected indoor vegetable garden that makes it easy to grow fruits and vegetables.

  • Their product is mainly aimed at an urban clientele that does not have the time or the talent for gardening.

In the face of galloping inflation, growing your own fruits and vegetables can be a good alternative.

But it's not easy to have a green thumb when you live in an apartment or in a small house without a garden.

Some also balk at the joys of gardening for lack of time or talent.

To convince all these beautiful people to get started, two young people from Rennes have just launched on the market a vegetable garden furniture perfectly adapted to small spaces.


The size of a small dishwasher, the Urban Cuisine does not require great skills in horticulture either.

“We wanted the product to be as simple as possible, like gardening for dummies,” emphasizes Joséphine Thebault.

Originally from Arradon near Vannes, the young woman embarked on the adventure in the summer of 2018 with Antoine Lorcy.

Both graduated from business school, they surrounded themselves with fruit and vegetable experts to develop an indoor vegetable garden "that offers the best possible yield," says the co-founder of the start-up.

And without too much effort.

Sixteen plants can grow simultaneously

The user manual for the Urban Cuisine is indeed quite basic.

Once the vegetable garden has been received, the budding gardener only has to plant his ready-to-use seeds, fill the water tank, plug into an electrical outlet and you're done.

“All you have to do is wait for it to grow and harvest,” explains the young Breton entrepreneur.

To make the exercise so simple, the pair took inspiration from hydroponics, which consists of growing plants without soil.

Instead, the two young entrepreneurs opted for cultivation plugs, a nutrient-optimized mixture of wood chip fibers in which the seeds of the fruits and vegetables have already been sown.

“We eliminated all the stages of gardening with a ready-to-use product,” explains Joséphine Thebault.

Sold for 350 euros, the indoor vegetable garden, equipped with an LED panel, can grow sixteen plants simultaneously, such as cherry tomatoes, basil, mini-peppers, radishes or cayenne peppers.

With the promise to harvest “three kilos of fruit and vegetables per month”, according to the founder.

For the less gifted, an application connected to the vegetable garden also tells them when to water and when it's time to harvest.

All thanks to sensors installed in the vegetable garden that constantly monitor the water level, temperature, ventilation and humidity inside. 

Soon a test with kitchen designers

While the first 300 copies of Urban Cuisine will be delivered to customers in early December, the vegetable garden furniture will be honored at Mif Expo, the Made in France trade fair which is held until Sunday at Porte de Versailles in Paris.

Along with four other start-ups, the Rennes start-up will compete in the “Hope of the Year” category, the winner of which will be known this Thursday evening.



Trophy or not, 2023 promises to be the year of growth for Urban Cuisine, which has signed a partnership with the Nature et Découvertes brand and will also test its product with kitchen designers.

Lille

Roubaix: Video training for new gardening enthusiasts

Planet

Toulouse: At the time of urban agriculture, can we grow organic in a polluted environment?

  • Vegetable garden

  • Gardening

  • Fruits and vegetables

  • Made in France

  • start-up

  • reindeer

  • Brittany

  • Innovation

  • Company