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My Mission for myPanier

My Mission for myPanier

Les Trois Abeilles, a second-generation Nougat producer from southern France, had a problem. The business knew the crafting of authentic Nougat from Montelimar better than anyone but needed help honing in on global customers with the same passion for their craft products.

Long ago the owners Agnes & Gilles connected to myPanier, a marketplace for artisanal food producers. Now they not only supply new customers across the Atlantic with Provence specialities, the team has also built valuable new partnerships with fellow French food brands, who found them on myPanier.

That story is one of the reasons I founded myPanier. There are literally millions of food businesses like Trois Abeilles around the World. Unfortunately, too many of them are faced with the impossible odds of having to grow craft production, deal with cross borders regulations and complex logistics, connect to distributors or retailers and become tech startups (to manage everything from their website to bookkeeping) all while trying to build a real connection with customers. That complexity can cloud the connection between the food product you buy and the maker who made it.

My parents working a farmers’ market in Provence, France

In fact, the goal to bring more transparency to our food system has been a part of me for as long as I can remember.

As the child of market booth owners growing up in Provence, France, I was inspired by my parents as they championed local produce at farmers’ markets each week. Then I got the opportunity to support local artisans during my career running large retail stores too.

"Those experiences taught me the value of fairness, transparency, nurturing community and that human connection."

Fast-forward to today and, while thirty years in food has taught me that creating economic opportunities for food producers is complex, it’s still my personal goal to help them. For the passionate producers like Augier Miel as much as the hard-working foodmakers from my new home in southern California, I’m helping them grow business more easily. For brands with a national or international footprint, myPanier introduces them to new customers too. It’s simple; for the team at myPanier, we’re putting our community first.

Meanwhile, we’re offering consumers a convenient way to get closer to their foodmakers too. For example by showcasing a seasonal selection of special products from around the world - and their makers - at a fair price. We’ve also made the experience of shopping on myPanier great too, for example by offering fast, quality shipping regardless of your home address.

Since 2016 with years on, hundreds of producers and thousands of orders later, my team and I are still just as passionate about what we’re doing. We’re also learning new things everyday about what makes a food marketplace work and the challenges still to surmount. We could not do it without the support of our customers, producers and vendors partners.

Ultimately, the thing that keeps me up at night is figuring out how to crack the code to re-engineer our food system so it’s more transparent and fair for producers and consumers. There’s a lot of work left to do but, having moved six thousand miles to get here, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Christophe Boyac is the Founder and CEO of myPanier.com, an innovative marketplace for speciality food producers from around the world to reach new customers.

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