Ali YAICI, les P’tits Cageots. Portrait

Bioeconomy is part of Bordeaux’s DNA. Committed to a citizen and respectful agriculture, New Aquitaine is, in fact, the place of many initiatives that highlight the locavore and short circuits. Among the players in the local food economy, Les P’tits Cageots are unavoidable. Existing since 2009 on Talence, its founder Ali YAICI worked twelve years on the project of the Little Cageots. A former Parisian with a great appetite for fair trade, Ali YAICI has always been a social entrepreneur, flourishing to make concrete useful projects: an aspiration for more local, organic consumption that makes sense.

A desire to move the lines with the P’tits Cageots

Ali YAICI’s entrepreneurial adventure evolves in a very concrete sense, seeing the very end of entrepreneurship. In 2009, at the time of the launch of the P’tits Cageots, the short circuit sector was nascent, there were very few initiatives, anchored in the ecosystem. Ali Yaici did not find commercial opportunities for independent producers to be paid the right price. The Little Cageots were created from A to Z. So we had to structure something that doesn’t exist, in the form of an insertion company.

This desire to undertake is still latent despite the legitimacy acquired by the Little Cageots over the years. For example, the P’tits crates started in vegetable production three years ago in the face of the lack of production in the territory, especially for vegetables. The idea was to produce what was missing in the territory. Otherwise, Ali YAICI is supplied by already existing producers in the Lot-Et-Garonne.

In short circuits, entrepreneurship can solve issues of general interest. For example, Ali YAICI, has made anti-waste an important issue. Reflections were carried out within the P’tits Cageots on the management of food surpluses. For example, Ali YAICI has set up a processing laboratory for lactofermentation. His vision of entrepreneurship therefore joins the action and deployment of innovative ideas in order to demonstrate that creating an economically viable project in ESS companies is well possible.

Social entrepreneurship, a profession of passion

The Little Cageots works mainly online, in a dematerialized way where customers can make their orders. In order to maintain customer contact, the store located on Avenue de Thouars in Talence is thus designed as a point of sale and a point of withdrawal of orders, while the delivery service is fully internalized. Indeed, for Ali YAICI, it is necessary to be able to break the virtuality, a problem that concerns the entire e-commerce sector. The Social and Solidarity Economy is also a sector where entrepreneurship takes on its full meaning, values that the Little Cageots can give to see and to live.

“Agriculture is the new start-up”

Ali YAICI has also embarked on the P’tits Cageots project with the thought that modern agriculture has a bright future ahead of it. Convinced that modern agriculture provides life for an entire economic and personal ecosystem, it relies on value creation, proximity to consumers and a healthy environment. It is in this perspective that the places of production of the P’tits Cageots will in the future be opened to make them places of proximity, to welcome visitors.

When a family takes care of the chicken coop, the children wait for the eggs of the hens they have cared for, and do not want any more eggs. A closeness is created. Modern agriculture therefore meets expectations of a quest for meaning. The communication of the Ptits crates is oriented in this perspective. The Facebook page serves only to keep the community alive, by communicating about vegetable donations or employees, through storytelling and the “our employees have talent” section.

brown cow in the wild
“The Beautiful” – Photography Manon LEPREVOST

A team that reflects the entrepreneurial concept: social and solidarity

A true job creator, the P’tits Cageots employ about 40 people. Contracted by the State as an insertion company, the P’tits Cageots set up an accompanying support for people in difficulty. Twenty-seven employees are thus on fixed-term contracts for a maximum of two years, the time on which the support must be carried out. Within the team, Camille is entirely dedicated to this atypical organization: she accompanies these employees in their projects (technical supervision) by identifying the different barriers to employability whether for training, health, childcare, mobility etc. The goal of an insertion company is to support people in vulnerable situations to enable them to bounce back by creating collective wealth.

“Jobs must benefit those who need them most”

This government agreement represents less than 10% of the resources of the Little Cageots, resources solely due to the integration mission. Indeed, one of the conditions to be able to become an insertion company, is to be able to show that the company could be economically viable, by operating traditionally, other than with subsidies. The integration company is therefore a choice, an investment.

Les P’tits Cageots, the recipe for success

In 2019, the turnover of the P’tits Cageots was two million euros. Since its inception, the company has never faced a loss-making year and is growing at an annual rate of 20-25%. However, the company is currently unable to absorb additional growth and instead wants to smooth the business throughout the year. It is easier to be more profitable by being a conventional company but the search for “wealth” is not the same. This is evidenced by the very good exit rate with a sustainable integration of employees to the tune of 90%.

“Performance can’t just be economic.”

This exit rate also reveals the good health of the company and its sustainability, in which the notion of social performance is important. It is this alternative vision of performance that makes the Little Cageots a democratist of the issue of food accessibility. Being independent of the market, the P’tits Cageots maintain cost control in order to always maintain an interest in the producer and the consumer.

A remarkable local ascent

The demand for short circuit is booming. The consumer wants purchasing power but also wants to exercise his power with the purchase, this is what the term consumer actor describes.

While consumption has not changed in decades: car, parking, Ali YAICI acknowledges that the consumer is “aware that his act of purchase affects society”

Alternative consumption patterns are emerging and have great potential if they are able to make themselves accessible to consumers. In the face of these new expectations, politics must seize these issues in the context of a collective awareness of a need for local and food self-sufficiency.

agriculture and vegetable harvest
Green Bean Harvest – Photography Manon LEPREVOST

This remarkable local ascent leads Ali YAICI to have to make a future choice between continuing the development of the Little Cageots, i.e. doubling in size or on the contrary accompanying a controlled growth.

“All the elements are brought together to make a choice of break development.”

Investments will be needed, especially in the integration of new skills (marketing, product quality, offer). Ali YAICI acknowledges, as such, that the project has been strongly supported by public policy structures. The most important aid is not necessarily financial, it lies in the advice and support, which have helped to bring the Little Cageots to where they are today.

“It’s a chance that communities are concerned about these issues”

A bet on the future

Ali YAICI’s ambition, which has lived in Talence since the late 1990s, can be found here in Bordeaux. The concept of circuit-court responds to geographical conditions. A national deployment would make it difficult to reduce the number of intermediaries in the production and distribution process. This local dimension to which Ali YAICI holds is the key to the success of P’tits Cageots in this very competitive sector.

Among the companies that have not been able to grasp the turn of the short circuit, is the company Paysans.fr which went bankrupt in 2014 which was present on the Lot-Et-Garonne. In parallel, giants are beginning to take an interest in it such as “Pour de Bon” launched by Chronofresh; La Poste that guarantee customers fresh delivery overnight anywhere in France. It is therefore crucial to take into account these new entrants in the development prospects of P’tits Cageots. The company remains local above all, as much as possible organic (nearly 90%). The objective is to move towards 100%, even if the local is fundamental because it allows not to hide under the label “organic” coming from neighboring countries.

On the side of his personal aspirations, Ali YAICI wishes to pursue entrepreneurship within the P’tits Cageots… Not as a manager but as a developer, a creator.

“My job is to create and share. We are not a company, we are a project, because it evolves, reinvents itself, grows.

The development of the company Les P’tits Cageots at the gates of the city

Its ambition is not to be a national company, nor to “franchise” this concept. Ali YAICI prefers to make available the economic model of P’tits Cageots as a symbol of success. In this perspective, the multiplication of initiatives around the short circuit is not perceived as a threat. On the contrary, it is a sign of emulation and the creation of a true microcosm. Especially since ten years ago, nothing was won. Today, the bet is a winner.

At the beginning of September 2021, Les P’tits Cageots acquired a cultivable plot of land in Le Haillan. The latter is located next to the municipal nurseries, thus offering the company many possibilities. The first harvest in this future organic urban farm is expected in spring 2022. Since its creation, which dates back 10 years, the company has marked a turning point. It employs more than 60 employees, a large part of whom are in integration. Moreover, it is not the first organic urban farm of P’tits Cageots. Indeed, the company already owns land in Léognan. A land on which she grows many fruits and vegetables… All organic.

This initiative attracts many local elected officials. They encourage this creation and promote this functioning. Feeding the Bordeaux population with local and organic products… What more could you ask for? This concept is developing, especially in cities, to offer local solutions… Creating jobs and promoting reintegration… But also to raise awareness about healthy and organic food. An ambitious gamble, to which Bordeaux consumers are sensitive.

Contact:

Ali YAICI – Les P’tits Cageots

244 Thouars Avenue

33400 TALENCE

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