Quality products at affordable prices

Interviewing Damien LOHIER, co-manager of Le Moulin

Le Moulin à Salades was created 11 years ago. In a bid to continue developing our concept of “offering quality products at affordable prices”, La Charrette du Moulin was born just over 4 years ago. Our first store was always full, so we recently opened a second one.

To make quality available to all, and expand our catchment area, we decided to set up a grouped delivery service. We wanted to break away from the image of the deliveryman who only delivers one pizza at a time, and recreate a bond with the customer, even during delivery. With just one cart, we can serve 70 to 90 customers, and do so in an environmentally-friendly way, using bicycles or electric cars. We target areas where there are no fast-food establishments.

The 3 pillars of our concept: 1/ “Healthy products”: local, seasonal, organic. 2 / Controlled prices, affordable to all, at meal ticket prices. 3/ A “benevolent” or “liberated” company.

Why not offer 100% organic?

The idea is to find a balance around “eating well”, which means organic produce of course, but also local, seasonal, quality products and selecting our partners and producers, whom we like to meet regularly. We need to know how they work and be in tune with it. There are economic and volume constraints to this type of operation. Last year, we were faced with a problem of volume, as we went from 100 to 800 meals a day (in the space of 3 years)!

So we had to find producers capable of supplying us with so much. Some could not keep up technically, but also had no interest in doing so, since they could sell their products at higher prices on markets. Our aim was not to squander our small local producers, so we had to find other suppliers who could meet our needs.

What is a “benevolent” or “liberated” company?

The idea is to have a co-managed company, with a project that’s co-built with the whole team. We want to give employees a great deal of freedom and responsibility to develop genuine well-being in the workplace. We want our employees to find their place at Le Moulin in projects that appeal to them. For example, an employee here will chop vegetables in the morning, prepare meals, deliver them and then do the company’s bookkeeping if they like it or if they’ve had basic training in accounting.

We try to internalise as much as possible, according to each person’s wishes and skills. We have gone from 7 to 40 employees in 4 years. The aim is also to restore the reputation of the fast-food industry by eliminating staff turnover, and we want the whole team to have the will and opportunity to support Le Moulin’s project.

Are all your products prepared on site?

Our raw materials are delivered every morning, and all our products are homemade. We wanted each of our stores to have its own kitchen. An employee who has received and prepared his vegetables that morning will be more able to talk about the products he is offering. Our experience with the TUBA space in Part-Dieu showed us that a boutique in which we only did the selling was an imperfect model. This model requires a lot of small contracts, and does not allow all employees to work in versatile, rewarding positions. The Moulin spirit wasn’t as present.

Who comes up with the recipes/menus?

For the past 2 or 3 years, we’ve been giving anyone who wants to participate the chance to suggest recipes. A seasonal calendar has just been drawn up and will change every quarter. Generally speaking, we have “red thread” products and 2 or 3 ingredients that change every month. Our employees are very committed, and there’s a real internal dynamic.

What relations do you have with your suppliers/producers?

We’ve established fairly strong relations with our partners. We’ve been working with some of them for a very long time, even before Le Moulin began, and we have some fairly recent new partners. We work with small, medium and large partners alike, and have succeeded in breaking away completely from Métro. We’re also in the process of setting up a purchasing department, thanks to the skills we have in-house – great energies we want to involve more in the company.

Do you think that your Charrettes customers are mainly attracted by “healthy eating” or by the convenience of home delivery?

We have a very broad customer base. Some of them are not necessarily “educated” about organic, healthy, local eating… We also have gourmet, more traditional products to offer, but we’re delighted to present them with alternatives. Introduce them to other seasonal products and (re)discover new flavours. Why not take the idea a step further and develop our ecolonomy offers even further: offering customers a discount if they don’t take cutlery, or having them come directly with their own reusable Tupperware. Others are already convinced and come specifically for that reason, because it is what they are looking for.

Are you an organic consumer yourself?

I already liked the idea before joining the Le Moulin team. But working there changed my way of consuming. I eat a lot more organic, local, unprocessed products, but it goes further. I really like the idea of adopting a “smart holistic approach”.

In short, organic is part of a holistic approach.

Because healthier food also means local, seasonal products grown by producers who care about the quality of their produce. And it also means a change in behaviour and the practice of ecolonomy. By reducing our consumption of plastic cutlery, for example, we can minimise the impact of our business on the bio-sphere.