What Carrefour plans to do with Potager City

Carrefour plans to open three branches of its new fresh food format Potager City in January. The concept? A fresh food shop offering short-chain products at supermarket prices.

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CEO Alexandre Bompard had already announced it in his recent strategic update: the retailer wants to strengthen its commitment to sustainable agriculture. To that end, the group is launching a new sustainable store format, and it has just released more details. The first three shops are already opening within two months, in Paris.

Potager City will be a fruit and vegetable speciality shop that charges the prices of a generalist, Carrefour’s Benoît Soury confirmed to French trade magazine LSA. “Our shops in city centres derive 42 % of their sales from fresh produce, while they have the image of being generalists rather than product specialists”, he says. The new format should remedy this: the shops will derive half of their turnover from fruit and vegetables, the rest from self-service fresh produce and wine. The offer will focus on short-chain products: (almost) straight from the farmer, in other words. To this end, Carrefour will collaborate with fresh food specialists.

The name Potager City is that of a startup that Carrefour acquired in 2020. That company delivers fruit and vegetable packages from local suppliers to homes and businesses in 350 French cities, with more than 5,500 pick-up points.