Day 3 – Logistics, Tomatoes & Some Luggage…but not mine yet :(

Today it was about a million times harder to drag myself out of bed at 7:30 am Brest time (1:30 am at home) and I was by no means the only one struggling. Almost everyone met for breakfast and lamented about their difficulty sleeping. I woke up a few times, completely disoriented of course, and checked my phone (which is still on East Coast time) only to think I had slept through my alarm and our first visit of the day. Looking at my phone which stared back at me with an 8:30 time, I was too tired to figure out what time it was here. So I wound up getting out of bed to check my laptop, where I added the Paris clock, to discover it was 2:30 in the morning. I still had five more hours of sleep thankfully. Granted, I’m still without luggage, so my morning routine has been greatly reduced in time, which allows for more sleep. But I’ll take 45 minutes being shaved off my sleep time for the arrival of my luggage.

So, our first company visit today was to SCARMOR. They are the logistics platform for a large French grocery store. The visit was over 2 hours and our guide only spoke French, so I’ll summarize what were my major takeaways. The first thing that I was surprised by was that SCARMOR is a cooperative factory. What this means for them is they never have turnover. As odd as that may sound, it actually makes sense in this situation. The supermarkets and hypermarkets are the clients, so they only order the inventory they need. No more, no less. I’m sure that keeps their costs down and allows them to get a better profit margin than similar companies that are not co-ops. Another aspect of their business I found really interesting (if not time consuming and possibly wasteful in the eyes of a larger logistics platform) was that they break down every pallet to check the goods for the right quantity, expiration date and quality. As I saw later that day (and you’ll see later this post), the French seem to be incredibly concerned with two things in the workplace: quality and productivity. In fact, at SCARMOR our guide (one of the two managers of the SCARMOR company) told us that if they get a delivery of fish or meat they’ll refuse any other deliveries afterwards (although I didn’t catch for how long) because they don’t want to contaminate other products with the smell. So they get high quality for the end customer and happy retailers due to the quality. While this would likely not win you much repeat business in the United States I would guess, this seems to be par for the course in France. The final aspect I found fascinating was that SCARMOR can be fined by a retailer if the High quality for the end customer and happy retailers due to the quality. While this would likely not win you much repeat business in the United States I would guess, this seems to be par for the course in France. The final aspect I found fascinating was that SCARMOR can be fined by a retailer if they do not deliver goods for a promotion on time, which is actually 10 days before the promotion’s start date. This was, as I understood it, because the retailers spend money on advertising and if the promotional product is not there in time, the retailers lose sales and therefore, profits.

As we left the factory to head back to campus for lunch, our French group leader got a call saying that 5 pieces of our luggage had made it to the campus. Every single one of us was hoping it would be theirs, but that wasn’t the case. So we drove back and went in to find the 5 bags, mine not included. Feeling completely disappointed, we headed outside to see a van with Air Transit on the side of it. Once again I got super excited, only to see a single bag come out of it. Not mine. Apparently Murphy’s Law is still in effect for yours truly. So, 54.5% of our group is ecstatic and the rest of us are still feeling like the unlucky ones. We think the rest of the luggage will arrive tomorrow, so hopefully when we get back from Quimper I will be reunited with my bright blue suitcase once again.

After the luggage debacle, we headed to lunch with some additional faculty members and representatives of the UBO Business School. We were seated at two tables and the one I was at was all students. So, not wanting to behave inappropriately at lunch, we peered at the table with the French to see when they did everything; from eating the bread placed in front of each seat to pouring ourselves water. Etiquette is something the French seem to hold near and dear to their hearts and we’d like to keep our snafus to a minimum.

Couer-de-Beouf Tomatoes

After lunch we headed to Saveol, which is a farm cooperative which specializes in tomatoes. They also have strawberries and cucumbers, but the tomatoes are the bread and butter of their business. If ever you want to see attention to detail and the most stringent quality standards, visit Saveol. I wish I could post some pictures from the tour, but we weren’t allowed to take photos. Let me tell you, these were the best tomatoes I have ever laid my eyes and nose on. They were perfect in every way, and you could certainly tell that Joe, our guide, loved him some tomatoes. We were provided with a pamphlet that describes each of the tomatoes and just about all of them look exotic compared to what we have available to us in the United States. Some of the names are a bit off putting, like Couer-de-Boeuf, which means Heart of Beef, yet they were perfect.

While we were walking through the facility, Joe picked up the Cerise Rubis and said that when going to a dinner party, “Bring this instead of wine.” He made a valid point. They’re the best tomatoes I’ve ever had and I doubt there is a shortage of wine at French dinner parties. We were also sent home with Cerise Rubis. Too bad we don’t have any dinner parties to attend.

Now back to the quality standards. Every single tomato that ends up in a Saveol box is the best of the best. I almost felt like I was in the tomato version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, although the bad tomatoes got sent to the cows in this version. The tomatoes are also grown without any dirt. They use pebbles and coconut fibers. I’m sure they had a lot more trade secrets that make their tomatoes so delicious, but that combination alone might be worth trying in a home garden.

On a side note, I actually felt like I understood a decent amount of what Joe was saying in French. He was speaking slow enough that my brain could travel back in time to my French classes from high school and grasp what the words were.

Tomorrow we’re off to Quimper, which is supposed to be a quintessentially French town. We’re heading to a cider house in the morning and a clothing manufacturer in the afternoon, with some crepes for lunch in the middle. So expect a picture heavy blog post for day 4 of my French adventure.