The Context
Entrepreneurs are finding it increasingly difficult to get started, to set up their business, especially in the food sector: lack of start-up capital, difficulty in finding premises, sometimes unprofessional launches etc. Moreover, it is often the same profiles that come back, but there is also a need to diversify the culinary offer. In particular for the culinary incubator in Goussainville with a need for local culinary offerings.
In the Val-d'Oise, the problem comes from its location: "It's not that people in the area don't want to eat this type of food, it's that they don't have access to it at the moment" says Fatima Idhammou, Head of the incubator.
To address these problems, the Goussainville culinary incubator offers to support, train and promote the work of these project leaders in the field of gastronomy and entrepreneurship. With the main objective of diversifying the culinary offer in the east of the Val-d'Oise department, this incubator is supported by an association: the Catering and Exchange Network (RER in French) association.
The project
Its implementation:
This culinary incubator project was born in 2016, when the RER association won the SNCF's Shared Station Challenge (source, link: http://garepartagee.sncf.com/). This incubator is part of a social and solidarity economy project.
This project quickly became a reality when the town made the former Elior central kitchen in Goussainville available. Indeed, unoccupied for two years, this centre has become, after several months of rehabilitation, the place to produce food that is both healthy and affordable.
The culinary incubator was therefore created in order to respond to current issues :
The Culinary Entrepreneur Accelerator offers a quality programme, delivered by experts. The Incubator offers culinary training courses such as training in culinary techniques, the creation of technical data sheets and recipes. There is support with training on product selection and large quantity production.
However, entrepreneurial support is also included in the incubator's programme with help on how to source suppliers and establish a supply chain, learn how to optimise sales prices, and have an approach to culinary communication (promoting products on social networks for example).
This program therefore offers multidisciplinary support where culinary training is offered, complemented by entrepreneurial training. There are a total of 208 hours of supervised training and 120 hours of research (with access to production tools).
The means:
The team that accompanies the project leaders reflects the training courses provided. There is a team of catering professionals :
The culinary team is complemented by two entrepreneurial coaches :
Which projects are incubated?
Entrepreneurs who are likely to be selected by this incubator must be entrepreneurs from the Roissy Pays de France area (Val-d'Oise conurbation community). They must already be part of a support programme.
The incubated initiatives are often entrepreneurs who have projects with a high potential for territorial impact, both innovative and with ambitions of ecological and/or social and/or culinary quality. They often have production problems (places or capacities), needs to refine or optimise their model.
The Goussainville Culinary Incubator is a springboard for catering projects located in the Val-d'Oise, with multidisciplinary support provided by professionals from the world of gastronomy and entrepreneurship. Roissy Pays de France is home to numerous farmland and market gardens. The challenge of the incubator is to reform this loop of local food, in short-distance distribution, and include it directly in the supply chain of the territory's culinary entrepreneurs.
The little extra
Please note that in the profile of the incubated, there is at least one spot automatically allocated to a Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) project!
Cette fiche initiative a été rédigée par Mario Miffurc, volontaire LFC - octobre 2020
Last modification : 22 Mar 2021.