[NBE] la Cocotte Solidaire

General information:

La Cocotte Solidaire is a combined restaurant/cafe and community kitchen. It is run by two private owners who are also the founders. The overriding mission of the operation is to cook and enjoy healthy food together. The management team invites anyone in the neighbourhood who is interested in cooking vegetarian dishes to participate in preparations of lunch. Six days a week lunch is prepared and then offered to lunch guests by flexible pricing method. The asked price for the lunch is 10 euros per person, however it is up to each guest to decide how much they would like to pay for the meal. This flexible pricing or free price method makes the guests of the restaurant pay anything from 0-15 euro per lunch. The citizens who participate in the cooking vary and it is not the same individuals who are engaged on a daily basis. Some citizens come to help once a week, once a month or several days depending upon time and availability. This high degree of flexibility demands extensive planning and therefore the management is running sign-up sheets in the premises and also on social media platforms. The sign up sheets apply for all the target groups, i.e. the cookers, the guests and the sourcing assistants.

Target group and ambitions:

The target groups are of different groups of citizens with a common interest in sustainable food. One group of citizens joins La Cocotte Solidaire in order to participate in the cooking, another group of citizens is coming to have lunch. There is also a third group who are supporting the operation by sourcing the food by collecting surplus vegetables from the local markets.

Business model:

Hybrid Model – the enterprise has paying customers and is self-financed but the owners has no profit interest for their own sake and all surplus of the operation goes into maintenance,  improvements and the owners are planning for an expansion by the establishment of a second outlet.

Environmental challenges, social and solidarity economy:

The operations  allow for sustainable production and consumption of food, reduction of  food waste, support of locally produced food and citizen participation & co-creation.