Dominique Schelcher, chief executive of the French retail group Coopérative U, told Le Parisien on 26 August that this summer’s heat and drought have left fruit and vegetables arriving in much smaller calibres, with prices up 13 per cent on average. Potatoes, he said, could be catastrophic. His message to shoppers was blunt: the produce may be less pretty than usual, buy it anyway, and you will be supporting French farmers.
Carrefour’s chief executive warned of the same thing the same day. Specification sheets have long run the other way — calibre, curve and colour were the contract between grower and retailer, and anything outside them never reached a shelf. One hot summer has done what a decade of anti-waste campaigns could not. The standard is being loosened from the top, and the chief executive is the one asking customers to accept it.
So…:
Which of your own standards is protecting a habit rather than the customer?
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