Potager City: bringing fresh fruit and vegetable baskets closer to consumers
"We needed to better show our network on the whole of France or by city. Woosmap allows us to display all the available delivery points on a whole city, a region, or even on the whole of France, without cutting down on the speed of the map display."
- Simple and readable mapping to show all delivery point options.
- A dynamic and fast display to encourage subscription at the beginning of the customer journey.
The adventure of Potager City, the good taste diggers ("les dénicheurs de bon"), began in 2007 in Lyon. This concept of distributing baskets of extra fresh fruit and vegetables, without stock, was created by two brothers at the end of their studies, Damien & Yoann Alarçon. Their goal: "to make people discover taste and freshness again".
The first deliveries were pedal-powered, on a three-wheeled bicycle. Today, more than 100,000 customers and 2,000 companies have adopted Potager City. The startup now counts the Carrefour retail group as its majority shareholder.
Depending on their location and their journeys, customers can select a delivery point in more than 350 towns in France. The dynamic map of Potager City, built with Woosmap, thus contributes to bringing fresh fruit and vegetable baskets closer to consumers.
Source: Potager City
Simplicity, freshness and proximity
The roots of the Potager City project lie in the idea of finding good, ultra-fresh market produce, direct from the producer. For individual consumers, Potager City offers ready-made fruit and vegetable baskets with recipe ideas. Customers can also choose their products to create a customised basket. For companies, Potager City also offers the delivery of fruit bowls as well as fruit and vegetable baskets delivered to the office.
Potager City does not just find good seasonal, local or organic produce depending on the region. The company also strives to bring these gems as close as possible to consumers, with the ease of choosing a collection point. Customers can take advantage of their journey home from work to stop off at a partner collection point. Such as florists, hairdressers, wine shops, bakeries and certain Carrefour Group shops. Works councils or Quality of Life at Work departments also allow collection on their premises.
Highlighting the network of relay points
Potager City's logistics chain is based on its network of producers and collection points for deliveries as close as possible to consumers. The company operates on a just-in-time basis, from order taking to picking and supply. A weekly basket order placed by Sunday at the latest will be available from Tuesday in a relay point. Potager City can thus deliver fresh seasonal produce, such as strawberries, raspberries and cherry tomatoes in spring, directly from the producer.
Potager City, therefore, needed a simple and readable map to present all these delivery point options. Because its network is dense around Paris and the major regional cities of Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse and Clermont-Ferrand. For instance, the 500,000 inhabitants of Lyon, Potager City's hometown, have several dozen delivery points within 15 minutes of their homes and even less than 500 metres away.
Potager City had developed its own map based on an online mapping tool. But displaying all the delivery points would have reduced the performance of the map display time. The company therefore chose to display a maximum of 20 delivery points around a customer's location. Carrefour's technical team then suggested the Woosmap solution, which the retailer already uses. It can share its use within its family of startups.
Source : Potager City
An ergonomic and dynamic map display
« We needed to better show our network on the whole of France or by city. Woosmap allows us to display all the available delivery points on a whole city, a region, or even on the whole of France, without cutting down on the speed of the map display. » Luc Cézard,
Technical and product manager IT, Potager City
With Woosmap, the display of the number of points on the map becomes unlimited and thus highlights the coverage of the Potager City distribution network. The dynamic display of all the delivery points, which change according to the movements on the map, is inspired by the ergonomics of the Airbnb map. Smaller round dots show the most distant delivery points. Closer points are displayed with customised icons supplying more information.
"The dynamic display of the map is important because our customers and prospects see it at the beginning of their journey on Potager City. This way they don't miss any fresh basket delivery options. Being able to easily integrate a relay point into their commute encourages them to try a weekly subscription."
Easy-to-integrate APIs
Within a month, the technical team of Potager City was able to deploy Woosmap’s APIs. With Woosmap Map (mapping), Geolocation, Localities (address search) and autocompletion.
« Our development team was autonomous to integrate the Woosmap APIs. We stayed within the configuration parameters of the tool with some customisation choices. It is this work of customising the front office and icons that required the most attention from our developers, with the support of Woosmap. We display certain information directly on the map, without the need for API calls to the back office. Like the opening hours of the collection points. While the maximum number of orders per relay point must be refreshed more often. » Luc Cézard.
For its future projects, Potager City is on the lookout for tasty treasures to offer its customers. Like old vegetables to be rediscovered or greenhouse tomatoes grown using waste heat from a factory. Its mapping will also be able to evolve according to the delivery options by city. Like the bike couriers available in Lyon, Paris, and Marseille.