Traveling Solidarity Grocery Store Provides Affordable Products to Families in Need in Rural Areas

On a square in the village of Limogne-en-Quercy, Audrey Zannetty unloads shopping bags from a truck which serves as a traveling grocery store: she crisscrosses the rural areas of the Lot to deliver products at reduced prices to families in need .

“The hardest part is hanging them up to create a moment of conviviality, most prefer not to be seen, so they just take their shopping and leave,” she says, taking out a table, chairs and some Juice.

Launched in September 2022 by the Terre Rouge Mutual Aid and Relations Network (RERTR), the traveling solidarity grocery store of which Audrey Zannetty is the coordinator operates like a supermarket drive-thru where the products are 70 to 90% cheaper.

The initiative is reserved for families in difficulty whose remaining life – what they can spend on daily life once the rent, bills and gasoline have been paid – is between five and twelve euros per day and per person. .

Temporary help

“It’s always a little difficult to ask for help,” says Manon, a 39-year-old accounting manager who asked – like all the beneficiaries interviewed – to use an assumed first name so as not to be recognized in her village. .

A recently separated mother of two children, she was referred to the solidarity grocery store by a social worker after an unexpected electricity bill of 900 euros, which she could not pay.

“It’s shocking to see that with just one bill, even when you’re working, you can find yourself in this situation,” she says, visibly uncomfortable.

For Claudine, a 62-year-old retiree, it was the repair of her car, essential in a small village, which put her budget in the red.

“I couldn’t do it alone,” she confides. “Inflation doesn’t help, between food and diesel… Refueling has become difficult, I have to make 20 euros by 20 euros.”

The increase in prices of almost 5% over one year in France, according to INSEE figures in September, has disrupted the daily lives of many families, in a country which already had more than nine million poor households.

Requests poured in from food aid distributors, leading associations to the brink of collapse, such as the Restos du Cœur which sounded the alarm at the beginning of September.

Grocery shopping does not replace food aid: it offers four months of assistance, renewable once, to families temporarily in difficulty.

“Everything is expensive, people restrict themselves. Some work 35 hours and can’t even finish the month (…) It’s humbling because we say to ourselves ‘it could happen to me tomorrow'”, underlines Audrey Zannetty .

-“Customers like any other”-

In the grocery store warehouse, 90% of the products are purchased thanks to subsidies and other activities of the association, a laundry and a caterer in the integration project. The rest comes from donations.

The traveling grocery store is itself an integration project: it operates thanks to four employees, in addition to Audrey Zannetty, who have been looking for work for a long time and work 24 to 28 hours a week while waiting to train. or find sustainable work.

This is the case of Adeline Fort, 27, preparing orders: her entry into the grocery store last year allowed her to gradually return to work, after three years without work.

“I have already been in need, so I understand the beneficiaries, but they remain customers like any other. For me, it’s a bit like working at Carrefour,” she smiles.

Unlike a traditional supermarket, the mobile grocery store rarely offers meat, fish or frozen foods, which are expensive or too difficult to store.

The association nevertheless seeks to establish partnerships with local producers, as it recently did for fruits and vegetables, to “offer the most balanced diet possible” to beneficiaries.

“We are here to allow people to have the basics, but we do not want to give them just pasta,” underlines Audrey Zannetty.

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