La Ruche qui dit Oui

Summary: this is something akin to a farmers market with pre-orders. Consumers order local produce, farmers and consumers all arrive at a pre-determined location and time for delivery, and farmers keep most of the money (with a small cut going to the location owners, and a cut going to the company that handles all the market-making/financial transactions.)

At present, this exists only in Europe, but it sounds like a US expansion might be possible.

I'm happy to read a french startup has access to top talents outside Europe. I wish them the best.

Oh and it's here: https://laruchequiditoui.fr/en

I have been using this service for a year. It's nice. Definitely more expensive than going to the supermarket but the food is way better. We have to eat less and more healthy anyway.

I just tried it, the whole process is a bit confusing. There's no store/location ("assembly") in my city (Germany), but my s/o lives in a somewhat more hip city which has a few.

To get any details for any individual assembly -- including finding out what's for sale! -- you need to register (full name, password and email). After registering, you still need to "join" each assembly individually before you see any goods, which feels a bit weird: I thought I was shopping for groceries, apparently I'm now in some sort of club. Or rather three clubs: the first two I tried had nothing for sale, which almost had me give up, but the third one does have some stuff:

A variety of vegetables, ranging from very to extremely expensive, think 2 to 4x of what you'd pay in a regular supermarket -- I guess they're artisinal or something. But the potatoes I bought earlier today were the same kind, also sourced from the region, and still cost half of what they're asking. They do have a huge variety of tomatoes, and I'd be happy to pay 3x the regular price for a tomato with an actual taste.

Apart from the veggies, that assembly also has wine and bread for prices that are average for good quality stuff, and overpriced chutneys and condiments, the kind you only buy as a gift.

This is not a terribly convincing display, to be honest, but I imagine the experience is very different in France, where they seem to have a much higher concentration of assemblies. Not completely different, though, since I can't imagine they have any chance of competing on price -- the regular food retail chain is bound to be ruthlessly efficient in that respect.

The whole concept has the huge downside that you have to pre-order AND be at the assembly location at a specific time, compared to the supermarket (no pre-order required, open all the time), the farmer's market (no pre-order required, open more often than any single assembly) or, I guess, web deliveries (though I don't intend to order a tomato from the web, ever).

What?

http://www.localharvest.org/csa/