La Louve

Tom Boothe, photo: Irmgard Kirchner

One of the co-founders of La Louve is Tom Boothe. Born in the US, he has lived in Paris for 17 years. Irmgard Kirchner from MILA conducted the following interview with him in Paris in February 2020.

Why does Vienna need a participatory supermarket?

Supermarkets exist for a good reason. They fit in with the way people live today. If we only worked twelve hours a week, the ideal way to shop would surely be a multitude of tiny shops. Supermarkets have a useful function in their environment. Their mistake is that they are profit-orientated. They should have a self-image like a public library: Comics are offered there as well as high-quality literature. Everyone is welcome. Applied to supermarkets, this would mean: They know a lot about food, try to offer the best food, know that price is a factor, which is why there are also conventional and industrially produced products. If you want people to buy better products, that’s exactly what you have to do.

But it’s not just about the products that are sold…

A functioning supermarket easily becomes a cultural and social centre. A woman who has lived in this neighbourhood for over ten years said that La Louve made her feel like a resident. Markets have always been social places of the first order in all cultures. Because people shop in supermarkets today, we have lost that. Nothing keeps you in the supermarket. Here in La Louve, people like to stay. They talk to each other, they go for a drink together after their work.

We offer high quality food that is much cheaper than anywhere else. And in an exceptional social environment.

Last year, 7.2 million euros did not flow into the capitalist economy through La Louve. All profits go into the pockets of the people here in the neighbourhood thanks to the low prices. If we have surpluses, we give the money directly to the community. For me, it’s a perfect model. We support the idea of the supermarket. But we are transforming it into something that belongs to the community.

How many initiatives like MILA are there at the moment, how many visitors like me do you receive?

Around 100 projects have contacted us. We never hear from some of them again. Other projects start well but then don’t work out for various reasons. For example, because there is disagreement about the goal of a fully-fledged supermarket. We make it clear that if people work three hours every four weeks and then have to go shopping somewhere else, they won’t stay with the project. Other projects want to be a producers’ cooperative at the same time. That’s an extremely bad idea. At La Louve, we treat our producers impeccably. That’s what our members demand. There is no price gouging. But if you mix a consumer co-operative with a producer co-operative, there are conflicts. Producers have a different interest and can also be unscrupulous. There are twelve to 14 really serious and promising projects.

La Louve works because we have studied and imitated Park Slope. Innovation doesn’t come from the initiators of a project, but from the entire co-operative out of practice. Innovation comes from boring things, not from sexy proposals. We reject the concept of genius entrepreneurship. Park Slope has excellent, highly qualified, pragmatic employees who are responsible for making things work. But they are part of a tradition that began in the 19th century, in the idea of the consumer co-operative: a very simple, very good system to which thousands of people contribute. It’s not about the individual ego. We want to be as ego-free as possible.

What are particularly important points for new initiatives?

The quality of the founding group. They have to be good people who work well. They have to agree on the project. Have the humility to study the things that work. The good news: Park Slope has been working for 47 years and we at La Louve are working to document all these practices and make them accessible to everyone – provided they want our model. Study hard, but don’t be afraid to move on quickly. It’s going to be very exciting to have a sister project in Vienna!