The traveling grocery store of the company "Comment ça vrac" allows you to shop in front of your home.

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G. Durand / 20 Minutes

  • With the “Comment ça vrac” itinerant bike-grocery store, it is possible to shop at the foot of your building in Lille.

  • Since the first confinement, a year ago, the concept has attracted more and more followers.

  • The originality of the project lies in the use of a hybrid machine, half bicycle, half market stall, made by one of the founders.

Shopping at the foot of his building: this is the idea developed by two Lille residents by launching in May 2019, a company called “Comment ça vrac”.

Objective: to sell fresh products in different neighborhoods under the windows of potential consumers.

And it works since, almost two years later, the two founders can finally pay each other their first salary.

Today, the company has five employees and is increasing the number of tours in Lille and a few neighboring towns, aboard their mobile grocery stores.

Because the originality of the project is first of all this hybrid machine, half bicycle, half market stall, made by Kevin Vander Eecken, co-founder of “Comment ça vrac”.

"We settle down and sell, like in a traditional market"

“It took a long time to make an easy-to-use prototype because the box that serves as a display weighs 250 kg,” says Kevin.

Street vendors thus transport vegetables and fruits from local producers, but also processed products such as bread, honey, jam or fruit juice, as well as pasta, rice or loose lentils.

"We limit to essential or locally produced products, except for certain foodstuffs such as oranges bought at the wholesale market in Lomme," explains Karim Arab, the other founder.

The stalls are prepared every morning in a small room located in the Vauban district of Lille.

Four tours - one in the morning and one in the afternoon - are dispatched to different districts of Lille, at the request of residents who also motivate their neighbors.

“We settle down and sell, like in a traditional market.

We do not compete, we are complementary ”, summarizes Karim.

And since the first confinement, a year ago, the concept is attracting more and more followers.

“We wanted to reproduce the mobile grocery store aspect that I experienced in the countryside when I was young.

With all the conviviality that it brings.

We are not just salespeople, ”he emphasizes.

Demand exploded at the first confinement

For this former graphic designer and his partner, a former carpenter, the challenge was considerable.

“Even if we had taken care of our market research, we were going a bit blind.

We feared the difficulty of changing habits, the management of transported volumes and bad weather ”.

To get off to a good start, they found invaluable help from a Cigales club.

And it was precisely when the tours began to find their cruising speed that demand exploded, in March 2020, with the first confinement.

“We had to recruit and build new bikes,” says Karim.

Word of mouth has been working quite well ever since.

"We sell, for example, a hundred kg of potatoes and sixty kg of carrots per week," he says.

The departure of the bicycle-grocery stores for the tour in a district of Lille.

- G. Durand / 20 Minutes

"I noticed their small mobile grocery store by chance while going to do my shopping at the local supermarket," admits Véronique, a regular customer of the rue Bonte-Pollet.

She started by buying fruit juice, then vegetables, bread… “From week to week, I bought more and more products.

And when I'm away, it's my sons who come to do the shopping because I can't do without them.

"

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  • Covid 19

  • Confinement

  • Bike

  • Business

  • Fruits and vegetables

  • Lille