“The Good Food” in Ehrenfeld is no ordinary supermarket: Here, customers are offered food for sale that has been sorted out elsewhere. The business model works well – at least most of the time. A site visit.
Is that still good or can it go away? Much food still ends up in the bin, and not just in private households. The shop “The Good Food” in Ehrenfeld, which sells fruit, vegetables and many other foods that are sorted out in regular stores, proves that there is another way. There are no fixed prices; everyone can pay what the goods are worth to them.
Shortly before the agreed appointment with Nicole Klaski, the founder of “The Good Food”, the phone rings. The boss promises whether I would like to go to the small warehouse a few streets away instead of going to the shop on Venloer Straße 414, a new load of goods would be arriving in the truck.
Delivery of goods: Employees lift cardboard boxes onto the pallet truck. (Source: Klaas Tigchelaar)
An employee is already on site using a pallet truck to move some packages and boxes to make space for three new pallets full of goods: tomato sauce, vegan spread, energy bars, coconut chips, nacho cheese sauce, noodles, tonic water, wholemeal biscuits and various craft beers pile up here. All foods that have either recently passed their best-before date or are simply given to “The Good Food” free of charge as overproduction by manufacturers, supermarkets or wholesalers.
Klaski comes into the back yard on the Dutch bike and waves happily, while I am still amazed at the incredible amount of food that is piled up in the not-so-small storage room and would otherwise have simply been destroyed.
Rolls and bread behind a slice: The customer decides what he wants to pay for a roll. (Source: Klaas Tigchelaar)
“Many products are still edible long after the best-before date has expired,” explains Klaski as the truck is being unloaded. “In contrast to meat or fish products with a use-by date, you should stick to it and we therefore do not sell these goods.”
Sensitize the industry
Saving food has long been more than a mere passion for the always cheerful boss. After studying law in Cologne and completing a Master of Human Rights degree in Perth, Australia, it was her work for an NGO in Kathmandu, Nepal that raised her awareness of food waste in the western world. And although Klaski knows that she is involuntarily part of the problem with her shop, she hopes that the food industry can be animated to be more sustainable and less wasteful in the long term.
Because it remains a grievance that she would rather remove than support widely. “We always have to be careful that we are not abused for greenwashing,” for example when companies want to give themselves a more environmentally conscious image with donations or PR measures.
Small beginnings, big success
Anything that doesn’t fit into the warehouse ends up in the potato cellar of the small grocer’s on the Venloer, which Klaski opened with a friend in February 2017. It all began with fruit and vegetables from the organic farm Lammertzhof in Kaarst, which simply remained in the fields as a so-called “post-harvest” or did not meet the requirements of the grocery trade due to shape or color.
At that time, this was unceremoniously transported by aunt’s car once a week to a mini market stall in front of the Weltempfänger Hostel in Cologne, where it quickly found enthusiastic regular customers.
A look at shelves with goods: the store in Cologne offers sorted out groceries. (Source: Klaas Tigchelaar)
Four years later, the range is very broad. In addition to fruit, vegetables or bread from the day before, there are also Italian pasta, sustainable teas and pale ale beers from Iceland. “Due to Corona in particular, we received a lot of goods that were actually intended for the catering trade, but could not be processed there due to the lockdown,” explains the food rescuer.
What is paid is what it is worth to the customer, but the original prices are displayed under the goods for orientation. “It usually works well, but there are also people who fill a huge Ikea bag to the top and then only leave 20 cents at the counter,” says the boss annoyed. Such cases caused frustration among employees, so that such disproportionate donations to customers are now openly addressed. Usually one can agree amicably, “but there are always a few incorrigible ones”.
In addition to around 100 volunteer employees who are now happy to help with “The Good Food”, four permanent positions have also been created. For some time now, Klaski has not had to work on the side to keep her vision of sustainable food distribution alive. It was clear from the start that she was not alone with this wish: “We never placed job advertisements, people came to us and wanted to join in because they thought the idea was good.”
Goods need to be organized and delivered
The logistics of the procurement of goods are demanding because the range is constantly changing. In addition to the farmer’s tours on which employees collect and transport the post-harvest, another team picks up goods that have not been sold every Friday at the Cologne wholesale market. Other food rescuers coordinate the offered pallets with goods by telephone, for which a van or small truck has to be rented. “We have a good network and many partners who support us so that we can remain financially independent,” reports the boss and shows the special e-transport bike in the warehouse on which an entire euro pallet can be transported: “That is actually the one first investment that we didn’t buy second-hand! “
Expansion always with care
With the Büdchen “Casablanca” on Sülzburgstrasse and the “Igloo” by Kiss The Inuit on Sudermanplatz, there have been two more sales outlets since 2020 that offer goods from “The Good Food”. “But we don’t want to keep growing, we want to build on the fact that we can do the things we do now even better,” explains Klaski.
According to the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, twelve million tons of food are “disposed of as waste along the food supply chain” every year. Since containers (taking food out of the shops’ waste containers) is a criminal offense, the only way to save the food is through organized sales. And there are other comrades-in-arms in other cities, such as the “Fairteilbar” in Münster or “Fairly Fair” in Erfurt, with whom “The Good Food” also exchanges or shares goods.
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