Celebrating 5 years of ReStore
ReStore (restore.org.in) is perhaps the best known organic food shop in chennai. it is run by an amazing bunch of volunteers with deep commitment to the organic farming movement. organic food marketing in urban india has two significant problems - 1. how do you supply a basket of products to an urban kitchen through the year when these produce arrive at your shop only during specific agricultural seasons 2. how do you do that consistently through the years with shifting farmer base, changing consumer behaviour and ever present operational problems of staff, infrastructure, transportation cost going up and other issues The scale of operation has to be significant for any organic food shop to break even in a urban centre as the overhead costs are high. ReStore by adopting a part volunteer network to manage the shop has tried to address the issues above in its own. I have no knowledge of how it is managed in the day to day basis, but, the fact a volunteer driven initiative has ma...