{"id":9628,"date":"2022-03-02T13:18:19","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T13:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.abele1757.com\/journal\/uncategorized\/benoit-deloffre-3-star-market-gardener\/"},"modified":"2022-03-02T15:09:47","modified_gmt":"2022-03-02T15:09:47","slug":"benoit-deloffre-3-star-market-gardener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abele1757.com\/en\/journal\/gastronomy-en\/benoit-deloffre-3-star-market-gardener\/","title":{"rendered":"Benoit Deloffre, 3-star market gardener"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Benoit Deloffre is one of the most high-profile farmers of his time. In just fifteen years, this passionate market gardener has become the gold standard for Michelin-starred chefs in France and worldwide. A global acclaim he shares with his wife and 400 varieties of rare, long-lost vegetables that he cultivates on his farm in Romain, near Reims in Champagne. For Abel\u00e9 1757, Benoit Deloffre agreed to meet us in the vegetable garden of his friend, Arnaud Lallement, chef at 3-star Michelin restaurant l\u2019Assiette Champenoise.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Jobs working on the land have a reputation for being tough. How did you come to work on the family farm and become a market gardener?<\/em><\/strong>If I had had to make a reasoned choice without seeing into the future, I would certainly not have chosen this route. But I didn\u2019t really have a choice. After my studies in business, I could have chosen many other paths, but I had spent my entire childhood in this environment. The bond is really strong. My family has been farming the same soils for three generations. Land on which my great-grandparents and grandparents have given their blood, sweat and tears. At just 12 years old I was already driving the tractor and ploughing the soils. Somehow, I was trained on the job, without ever going to agricultural college. My childhood was punctuated with times like this.<\/p>\n\n

\"Benoît<\/figure>\n

In the early 2000s, my parents started to do the local markets twice a week in Reims (NDLR : Boulingrin et Avenue Jean Jaur\u00e8s)<\/em>. All through my childhood I would go too, spending time in close contact with people, and in the holidays helping my father on the farm. In the end, I came back for a simple reason \u2013 I missed it. I missed the farm and my family. It was almost ten years until my father was due to retire, which left ample time for a thorough handover from one generation to the next. And that is exactly what happened. Over time, I gradually took on parts of the farm and slowly introduced my own way of doing things.In my second year on the farm, we started to work with prestigious restaurants, despite my father\u2019s reticence. Since I was really young, he would always say that clients were complicated, that they struggled to pay invoices, and that it would make my life a lot more complicated. In spite of it all, we went ahead with our plan. For five years, I resisted taking on too many clients. We wanted to establish solid foundations and great quality produce to be able to have a serious go of it. And once this was in place, we opened the door to other chefs, still working in the premium segment.Fifteen years on and you have forged a reputation as \u2018market gardener to Michelin-starred establishments\u2019. How do you explain this recognition among chefs?<\/em><\/strong>The real turning point came when we started working with Arnaud Lallement. (NDLR : Chef \u00e9toil\u00e9 de l\u2019Assiette Champenoise***)<\/em>. Once your produce is on the menu of a 3-star Michelin restaurant, everything changes, and it doesn\u2019t take long for the phone to start ringing.When we first started working with l\u2019Assiette Champenoise, there were only twenty-six 3-star Michelin chefs in France. Now, there must be around thirty. It\u2019s a very close-knit community where everyone knows each other. There\u2019s also a strong customer base that migrates from one 3-star restaurant to the next, and enjoys ticking off each one as they go.<\/p>\n\n

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Finally, we have always placed a great deal of emphasis on doing business differently. Personally, I don\u2019t see myself as a supplier. I work on an equal footing with top chefs such as Arnaud Lallement<\/a> or Emmanuel Renaut<\/a>. It\u2019s about people and relationships. We wouldn\u2019t be able to work like crazy if we didn\u2019t have passion, or even friendships for some. It makes everything much more enjoyable and straightforward.Over the past fifteen years, we haven\u2019t once had to go out and look for business. It has just happened. We have even travelled to Asia and Switzerland to share our expertise. We have launched farms in countries where the people, soils and weather – basically everything – is worlds apart. You just need an open mind and be prepared to step off the beaten track.What for you are the main principles and values that guide your work as a market gardener?<\/em><\/strong>Passion. It goes without saying. You have to be super passionate about what you do as it requires enormous amounts of energy and a lot of organisation. It involves life choices that affect everybody. When work takes us to the Mandarin Oriental de Bangkok<\/a>, 2-star Michelin restaurant headed up by French chef Arnaud Dunand-Sauthier,<\/a> it\u2019s a family affair.Initially, Arnaud wanted the fresh produce to be shipped from France and then prepared in Bangkok. I started to realise this was a problem. We took time to meet and discuss his needs, which is when he explained how it all worked. In reality, 85% of his produce is imported. None of the foods are produced locally as there just isn\u2019t the know-how. It\u2019s a totally different way of farming that has to be taught from scratch. We came up with the idea of forming a small group to focus our expertise on a farm located just 40km outside Bangkok. It was such an interesting challenge, a real joint adventure, with all the ups and downs that come with it.At the other end of the scale, we launched another project in Cambodia. When we arrived, we hired a number of staff who were in total chaos. To such an extent that only one of the team knew how to write. Yet starting from a blank piece of paper, we achieved remarkable results. The staff were so enthusiastic and understood everything, without any formal education. In Thailand, our mistake was to assume that the management style would be the same. However, a trained 25-year-old in Thailand would never have any authority over a 50-year-old worker. The advantage of age would give the more senior worker the upper hand as chef. As a result, it was hugely time-consuming to set up, given this type of ongoing problem. These are just cultural challenges you need to understand. But it\u2019s also about people and doing your bit for the planet. If we had agreed to the initial brief, it would have taken a 12-hour flight for our vegetables to get there. To sum up, passion is a must. Sunshine after the rain. You just have to accept the good with the bad, like a vinegrower. Accept that given the frost and hail, you need to be relatively brave.<\/p>\n\n