The Culinary College is a unique association that brings together quality producers and restaurateurs who wish to create virtuous and profitable links between them in order to allow each of them to deepen their commitment to quality.
The initial observation was twofold: on the one hand, the French restaurant industry had an unfortunate tendency to use ready-to-eat products and to buy them from industrialists, thus jeopardizing its reality and its reputation for quality, and even the very meaning of the restaurant profession, and on the other hand, quality producers had difficulty making a living from their activity due to a lack of visibility and outlets.
It was therefore necessary to put them in contact with each other and to convince them of the need to work with quality products.
The formidable team of great chefs including Anne-Sophie Pic, Alain Ducasse, Yannick Alléno, Georges Blanc, Mauro Colagreco, Alexandre Mazzia, Yoann Conte etc... thus launched the constitution and promotion of the network.
Today, the Culinary College brings together 3500 professionals, producers and restaurateurs, and has just opened its doors to the pastry industry.
L'Arbre à Café has been an active member of the Culinary College since the early days and has long been committed to setting the standard for quality.
Why does L'Arbre à Café join the Culinary College?
This is only natural, as the Culinary College has the same ambition as L'Arbre à Café since 2009. There are no bad products, but there are not enough good producers. Industrial and ready-to-eat products are not inevitable, but a choice made by restaurateurs often based on convenience. It is therefore necessary to facilitate access to quality producers.
As you will have understood, what the Culinary College promotes, with a unifying ambition and for all products, L'Arbre à Café does so with the highest standards and for coffee. Our mantra has always been to make coffee, a foodstuff that has become industrial, an exceptional product like any other.
As you will have understood, the driving force chosen by the culinary college, i.e. the supplier-restaurateur relationship, is at the heart of L'Arbre à Café's approach, which for a long time was exclusively BtoB, and which invented top-of-the-range coffee for restaurants.
What does L'Arbre à Café do with the Culinary College?
L'Arbre à Café has long participated in the quality working group. What is a quality product? Where does the craft begin and the industrial end? Can the craft industry use techniques and innovations from the industry without losing its soul? And is industry condemned to mediocre quality and less than virtuous practices? What are the pivotal volumes? etc...
What is sustainability in the restaurant industry? A green flower? All organic? All these essential questions are driving the College and it needs the insights and expertise of committed and pioneering players like L'Arbre à Café.
L'Arbre à Café also promotes these producer-restaurateur partnerships during events and trade shows by highlighting the links between coffee and another product, such as cheese with Laure Fourgeaud or French caviar with Sturia in particular, or with chefs such as Anne-Sophie Pic, Stéphane Jégo or Ronan Kervarec.
Finally, L'Arbre à Café has the pleasure to intervene on different fairs and annual meetings by proposing our coffees to visitors, chefs, journalists and producers in order to make community and to promote our requirement of quality, obviously organic, better biodynamic, obviously direct producer, obviously green and obviously in synergy with other committed communities like B Corp or EcoTable.
The team of L'Arbre à Café is very proud and happy to be part of this movement, which, thanks to its General Delegate, the formidable Celia Tunc, is extraordinarily dynamic and makes every member happy to display the College's coat of arms on his or her window.
