Automats for organic food in Paris
Today, entrepreneurs in France and Scotland are appropriating the concept that once symbolised modernity to help customers get back to the land. Their automats offer not burgers and fries, but fresh and local produce.
Joseph Petit employs no staff at his two Paris stores. Both called Au Bout du Champ (“at the end of the field”), the small spaces are stacked with metal cubbies containing just-picked strawberries, hours-old eggs and neat bunches of carrots or spring onions, depending on the season. Customers choose the box that contains the food they want to buy, then pay at a console which then opens the appropriate door.
It’s a system that brings fresh food to urban areas where few other options exist, while also supporting local, small-scale agriculture.
Petit maintains direct relationships with the half-dozen or so producers he buys from; the suppliers vary according to the season. The farmers cultivate a variety of vegetables, fruit, mushrooms and herbs, in addition to eggs and juice. All of them work within 100 kilometres of Paris, and Petit and his colleagues go to collect the fresh harvest every day for delivery.
Petit said he maintains competitive prices by employing no staff, instead relying on customers to operate the automats themselves. It also allows him to keep his shops open seven days a week from 8am until 10pm, a novelty in a city where shops close down before sunset.
Petit opened his first store in the north-west Paris suburb Levallois in July 2013, unveiling the second in the city’s Clichy neighbourhood a year later. The stores each serve approximately 100 customers a day, perhaps double on weekends, Petit estimates.
Click here to read more at thenational.ae.