Sustainable Innovation Pilot 3

Empowering consumers through crowdsourcing to regain control over their food and create healthy, sustainable, fair trade products.

During the "milk crisis" in France, a group of consumers created the “C’est qui le patron?!” (Who is the boss?) brand with the aim of supporting the development of the agri-food sector. This is achieved by letting the consumers design their products through a crowdsourcing platform, voting against a variety of sustainability characteristics, deciding how much they will pay to retailer and the producer. “C’est qui le Patron ?!” is the most successful model of the last 30 years in France, supporting 4,000 producer and farmer families, and is supported by 14 million consumers. France now has more than 30 products in stores.

Challenge: A need for technological improvements and for supporting the model’s replication to four (4) countries.

Sustainable innovation pilots activities:

a) Creating online questionnaires for ten (10) products (they are defined at the beginning of the year), allowing customers to choose the product characteristics. Each choice will correspond to a production cost that is reflected in the final price of the product.

b) A mobile application that will allow consumers to vote for the products’ shape, see the selling points, scan QR code for additional information, and be informed on similar products.

c) Innovative processes to enhance collaboration and communication between actors of the value chain.

d) Ensuring products are manufactured in accordance to consumer specifications.

e) Transferring knowledge to three (3) other EU countries (UK, Germany, Belgium), helping local consumers create their own products.This is custom heading element