SuperQuinquin

Visit to SuperQuinquin in Lille

Klaus Kirchner from MILA describes how a visit to Superquinquin in Lille inspired him to get involved in setting up a participatory supermarket in Vienna.

Superquinquin [pronounced: superkänkän]

A friend from the French city of Lille, a mum with three children in the household, writes to me: “I’ve completely changed my diet. Since I’ve had my own supermarket, we eat better fruit and vegetables than ever before.”

“Ha ha, good humour – your own supermarket!”, I reply.

She invites me to come and see for myself.

And that’s easy. The supermarket is called Superquinquin – the supermarket where you are the hero.

I have an orientation talk, become a member of the cooperative and start working my first three hours in the supermarket and, of course, go shopping straight away. I spend a week in the supermarket every day and ask everyone why they are there and what brought them here. I want to find out how this apparent marvel works. And it works like this:

Giselle and Nicolas have heard about the participatory supermarket La Louve (“The She-Wolf”) in Paris. Nicolas studied economics and advises alternative business projects. Now he wants to start his own. In January 2015, Giselle invites her friends to a start-up meeting at her home. These 15 people set up an association that managed to gather 1,200 people over the next three years, found a cooperative and open a test supermarket. At the beginning of 2020, Superquinquin moves into its own premises: 1,400 square metres of shop space, a garden where the children of the people currently working in the supermarket can be looked after and a small house where the offices are located and where orientation talks, cooking courses and workshops of the start-up association, which has been transformed into an educational association, take place.

Me: “How was that possible?”

Giselle: “We just kept at it. Our secret was to always speak directly to people. For the first few years, we had no social media presence at all, just direct contact. And it was a long journey. Only a handful of the founding members are still around. Twice along the way, we lost half of our members. But we stayed on track. And the she-wolf from Paris always advised us and provided us with the necessary information. It’s simple. If you want to do the same in Vienna, get started.”