2023-06-11 04:00:17
The La Rochelle wholesale market has recently been living a double life. It is still dark when the electric pallet trucks load and unload the crates of fresh fruit and vegetables, around which market gardeners, delivery men and restaurateurs cross paths.
A few hours later, when the professionals have deserted the aisles of the little Rungis in La Rochelle, individuals come to do their shopping, even if it is not possible to buy tomatoes or courgettes at retail: extra-fresh products are sold by trays or whole crates. There is a traffic jam in front of the crates at 10 or 20 euros containing, depending on the day’s arrivals, potatoes, salads, radishes, bananas, strawberries, raspberries…
Le Dépôt, the name given to a room in the large building, welcomes the public two days a week to the economic activity zone of Périgny, a neighboring town of La Rochelle. The place is not the most attractive and the wholesale market has done without , but the line of carts which grows longer from week to week before the lifting of the iron curtain testifies to the rapid success acquired by this type of trade, unheard of in the region, and no doubt elsewhere.
“Are we the first in France? I’ve no idea. I don’t even know if it will still exist in two years, the trade is evolving at such a speed…” Stéphane Guitet can’t believe it himself. Today the boss of CM Asupplement and the MDG company, manager of the wholesale market in La Rochelle, he started working on the markets at a very young age. It experienced the development of large-scale distribution purchasing groups in the 1990s, which undermined the quasi-monopoly of wholesale markets.
“Destocking and anti-waste”
Mr. Guitet, born in 1971 as the Périgny wholesale market, adapted each time, as during the first confinement, when the traditional markets were closed and home deliveries exploded. This is still what he did when, last March, a Grand Frais store opened in the Belle-Aire business area, in Aytré. A declaration of war for CM Supply, whose brands Couleur marché and L’Heure du marché have spread to Vendée and Deux-Sèvres.
The boss immediately counter-attacked by opening Le Dépôt, a place of “destocking and anti-waste”. But he did not expect such enthusiasm, even in the midst of food inflation. “We took a slaphe confides. That there are so many people, that raises questions. After the three crazy years we’ve been through, the pandemic and then the war in Ukraine, we see that there is a deep societal problem. » The surprise is all the greater since the manager of the wholesale market has not invested “a single euro” to fit out Le Dépôt nor recruited staff. “It’s the most sober form there is. »
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