Toulouse. Better than Black Friday (and better for the planet), they invent Gascon Black Day
By Guillaume Laurent
Published on
It is “a snub to mass consumption” that prevails during the black friday, this week. Installed a Colomiers (Haute-Garonne), at the gates of Toulouse, very close to the Airbus factories, the sign Minjat! invent the… Gascon black day.
Here, “no products at bargain prices from the end of the world, but from Bigorre black pork, of the Astarac Hen and others black goods from the neighboring Gascony countryside”. Minjat! sees in this tasty event “a delicious way to raise consumer awareness at fair prices and fair trade”.
What is Minjat?
Minjat! (“to eat” in Occitan, editor’s note) is a food store and an canteen in a short circuit, where “everything has been thought out to bring the countryside closer to the Toulouse metropolis, when it’s time to do your shopping and sit down to eat”, sums up the brand. At the origin of this 100% Occitan concept, born in 2018, three friends: Cyril Picot and Anton Dmitrievboth sons of farmers, as well as David Pages, which has long supported agricultural sectors and food companies. From the outset, the trio had set themselves an objective: “Give taste and meaning to our food purchases, to our plates, but also to democratize local food”. They were therefore keen to “transmit in our baskets, the best of what grows and is raised close to Toulouse”.
“More than 90% of the products sold on the shelves (butchers, groceries, fruit and vegetables, fresh, dry, etc.) and served in the adjoining canteen, tested from farms located for the most part in the neighboring departments; 100% come from sustainable or organic farming and guaranteed without GMOs. Zero waste is also a must since here we don’t throw anything away and we transform everything in the kitchen”.
A few weeks ago, their event “Squeeze Your Juice” a permit, for example, to save food waste five tons of apples. The stained or slightly damaged fruits came from orchards in the Tarn and were pressed to be valued in another way.
Black Friday? “A commercial and energy-consuming madness”
Concerned about sovereignty eating and crises that are shaking France, the trio therefore wanted to take the opposite view of Black Friday, “real planetary, energy-consuming commercial madness”, he complains. By playing on its name, Cyril, Anton and David, faithful to their origins, have therefore invented the “Gascon Black Day”!
“It’s a way to remember our values, our identity, and the importance of food in our vision of the world. Between the war in Ukraine and inflation on the one hand, the environmental crisis of other, this event has a special meaning this year… Our meals have a lot of meaning in the current context, where we must be more careful than ever about what we put on our plate”.
Animals “against the tide of Black Friday”
Like Black Friday, the duration of which in reality greatly exceeds the single day of Friday, the event will be held over two days: the friday 25 and Saturday November 26 2022 will be attributed to the discovery of local “black” products from Occitania. Animations are produced and for the occasion, the consumer will be able to meet the locals.
Local breeds and taste, such as the Bigorre black pork or the Astarac black hen will be honoured. “Long threatened with extinction and saved thanks to a handful of enthusiasts, they are now found in all their panache on our tables”, argues the co-manager of Minjat!.
“These are slow-growing animals, which take three times as long to raise: they themselves are totally against the grain of the Black Friday consumer frenzy.”
On the wine side, it’s the Black Manseng, that we can come and taste. Long forgotten, this autochthonous grape variety delivers a wine at only 11.5°… “A godsend in a climatic context where the alcohol content tends to soar”.
No fair at knockdown prices, warns the sign
That said, Minjat! sets the tone: if the Gascon Black Day hijack the codes of Black Friday, “it won’t be certainly not the bargain fair, but rather fair prices and fair trade for both the farmer and the consumer”.
“When at Minjat!, you buy 10 € of product is 6.20 € on average which went back to the producer”, explains Cyrille Picot, which praises a more virtuous trade, in order to allow producers to “live with dignity from their work”.
“We work with 350 farmers, producers and market gardeners in Haute-Garonne and neighboring departments. We do not negotiate the prices of the products we buy from them, especially meat, and we will not sell them off on this occasion. Of course, if we consider that the price offered by a farmer is above ground, we do not buy, but we do not put a knife to his throat”.
Four years after its creation, Minjat! indicates having “paid more than seven million euros in local purchases in short circuit, or 68% of the turnover excluding tax collected over this same period”. Forty jobs were also created at the point of sale.
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