ACHI, beaucoup plus qu’un restaurant

ACHI, far more than just a restaurant.
Collaborate with us in developing our establishment and our agricultural and textile project!

Presenting the project :
Below is a summary of the operation.
One project, 3 people, 3 places and 3 activities
 
Spelt is grown in our fields (Clément)
Sowing 4 hectares of spelt in October 2021 to be harvested in July 2022
The grain is cooked at ACHI, our restaurant (Basile)
Spelt risotto / Roasted tomato caviar / Broccoli espuma / Toasted almonds / Green oil, currently on the menu in our restaurant
The spelt husk is used as a filling for pillows (Guillaume)
Pillow making: sewed and dyed in our textile workshop (production of pillows for winter 2022-2023) Prototype in progress!

So now if you want to know more about the history of this project, it's here! Alternatively you can also support us directly!

In the summer of 2015, we collectively envisioned a common future.
The ecological crisis was at this time already established and in need of creative solutions.

Meet the team: Basile, Guillaume and Clément, and all the friends and supporters who have contributed in any way to this adventure.

We started this journey with only 3,000€ in our pockets.
Today, 7 years later, we think it is time to tell you about the existence and the future of this initiative, which we are building little by little with those likeminded whose paths we cross.
This initiative is multiform by essence and is embodied in the fields of agriculture, textiles and cuisine.

Agriculture
After studying landscape design, Clément specialises in the care of trees, and works with agroforestry associations.
He designs and manages the undertaking of on-site planting projects. It is through contact with agricultural experts across such a broad disciplinary spectrum (livestock breeders, cereal growers, market gardeners), who unique working processes, that he discovers the different techniques and perspectives. By sharing these otherwise isolated initiatives, he gave rise to the desire to bring them together in an ambitious agricultural project:
To implement, test and develop an agricultural model of mixed farming and breeding on about 40 hectares, integrating the most innovative agronomic techniques: organic farming, agroecology, agroforestry, direct seeding under cover, market gardening on living soil, bio-intensive market gardening...
To develop the products of this agriculture in autonomy thanks to direct transformation workshops to make these activities economically viable, by optimizing costs and limiting transport.

After meeting Clément, Basile left Paris in 2016 to live in the Landes region of France and set up his first agricultural project.
In winter, both prepared the land to sow meslin. In the spring of 2017, they began to produce fresh vegetables in live soil market gardening on 4,000 m2 of earth.
 

Another textile factory
Meanwhile, in Poumerolles in Creuse, Guillaume is transposing the same thoughts to the textile industry. As for agriculture, the report is overwhelming but the initiatives, at the time, are very few.
The challenge was therefore great: to rethink textile manufacturing without continuing to destroy the environment and those who work there.  
The strategy was to build up a pool of second-hand machines and to refurbish them in order to maintain the quality and efficiency of an industrial production line while keeping a more artisanal production scale.
At the same time, with Philippine, his partner, he travelled around France in search of local producers. He discovered the flax industry in Normandy, where France is the first producer in the world, the country wool from the Massif Central, considered as a waste product from the production of lamb meat, and the merino wool from Arles de Provence- with exceptional
qualities, but which suffers from a lack of valorization.

Since these natural fiber production channels lack outlets, Guillaume and Philippine decided to turn their project into a workshop for creating and making utilitarian clothing: Atelier Usages, from raw fibers. After their first collection, they pursue their idea by integrating a vegetable dyeing laboratory to the workshop allowing them to add natural colors and patterns (indigo, madder, cachou) to their pieces.
After 2 years in their workshop-boutique in Romans-sur-Isère in the Drôme, the financial aspect of the project proved difficult. They then moved to Nantes and launched their new project, "No Polyester Please". An equivocal name for a radical project: to avoid any form of plastic in the clothes and accessories they make to go beyond zero waste by ensuring the
biodegradability of what they produce.

A restaurant: Achi
Unable to access land in the Landes, Basile returns to Paris, while Clément continues his work as an agroforestry trainer.
In August 2018 it is the beginning of a new experience. Thanks to Margo, Basile's partner, they seize the opportunity to take over the management of a Parisian bistro, Chez Lui, while keeping in mind the idea of market gardening on living soil. They developed the cuisine of Chez Lui with quality ingredients, produced in an environmentally friendly way.

After two years of suffering the constraints of management and against the backdrop of the health crisis, a new opportunity arose: to buy a business on avenue Parmentier to make it their home.
Achi, restaurant of the cities, restaurant of the fields; thought and built from A to Z in a former storage space in the heart of the 11th district of Paris; was designed to affirm, show and say more loudly our values:
To make as accessible as possible in terms of price a cuisine of taste, original and creative. To use quality products.

 
To offer good working conditions to go against the trends of the restaurant business. After 6 months of work, Achi opened on May 7, 2021.
A direct link with the agricultural world for a seasonal cuisine, but also a link between people, because at Achi everyone can eat at the same table.

Agriculture and nursery
On his side, Clément had the opportunity to buy a 5 ha land on the edge of the forest of Mervent (South Vendée) including a big pond. After visits and study of the place, reinforced by considered reflections shared during the summer of 2020, a GFR of 26 people was formed to acquire it.
This establishment in the region allows Clément to invest the following year, in 2021, in an additional 30 hectares adjacent to the pond, thus offering the necessary surface to set up this large-scale agricultural project.
Thus, in the winter of 2021, we began planting fruit trees in which spelt is grown as an intercrop.
The following year, as Clément was preparing to launch his nursery activity of young forest and field trees, a new card fell on the table: a farmer had retired during the Covid and was looking to pass on his nursery.
If the need to find a place to store material and to have a drop-off point in the Vendée is affirmed, the visit of this nursery at the entrance of the village of Foussais-Payré accelerates our projections by opening our perspectives.
Indeed, this building of 450 m2 on the ground on an agricultural ground of 6 000 m2 makes possible in one go the concretization of all these initiatives:
Create a productive market garden by experimenting with bio-intensive and living soil models.
 

To make Clément's horticultural activity more viable by allowing him to produce young plants in professional conditions.
 

To install the textile workshop of clothing and vegetable dyeingT, developing in situ the dye plants which will be cultivated there, as well as Clément’s organic spelt husk; waste of the transformation of its grain into flour by a local mill.
 
To expand the rows and install numerous transformation workshops: cleaning and purification of the spelt husk (dust removal and sterilization), extraction of pigments and vegetable dyes, vegetable canning, drying of aromatic plants, cleaning and milling of grains, etc.
 
To become a place of reception, education and events to anchor itself in the local territory and to create a bridge with the Parisian activities.

In the spring of 2022, as the process of acquiring the site began, we met there to sow more than 15,000 trees in buckets; destined for agroforestry projects in the Vendée, such as the densification and reforestation of hedgerows. Thus, we have created the conditions to build a virtuous circle between these three initiatives, thought on ecological, economic and social levels.
 
After 7 years of self-financing and building this project with our own hands, we now need a helping hand to continue and start the next step!
From this spelt grain and with all the other seeds that will follow, we can collectively reinvent this world that is running out of steam by creating links.
 
By contributing, at your level, to this participative financing, we invite you to share our adventure, to help us to perpetuate the restaurant and to pursue our agricultural and textile project!
 
What will the fundraising be used for?

1st level 38 000€
The restaurant and its needs today!
From now on
Purchase of 3 water softeners for the kitchen equipment ---> 1 000
Communication budget for the restaurant ---> 5 000€
Working capital and cash flow ---> 32 000€
This first year of opening has been affected by the health crisis and the vaccination pass, which has had a strong impact on the restaurant's cash flow, but cash flow is necessary for the smooth running of the restaurant.

2nd level 55 000€
The entire restaurant today and tomorrow!
For spring 2023
Repair of the front of the restaurant ---> 5 000€
Purchase / installation of acoustic insulation panels ---> 7 000€
Arrangement of the terrace with vermicomposting bins ---> 5 000€

3rd level, 94 000€.  
The restaurant and the third place!
For January 2023
For the market garden, we still need a lot of material but also new plants and seeds to continue all the cultures.
As far as the buildings are concerned, we still need to insulate the interior, renovate the building, install a concrete slab and do other various things.
We would also like to equip the composting station and the textile workshop which still has needs to develop!

4th level, 113 000€
The global project is launched! It would be crazy and we believe in it!
Starting now
Sowing cereals: spelt, population corn, amaranth, old wheat
We have already started!
For January 2023
Between the fences, the solar panels, the new plantations and the setting up of a tree nursery in the ground, the needs for the projects to come soon are present!

If you would like to contribute to the project with a check, it can be sent to the following address and made out to :
ACHI
13 bis avenue Parmentier
75011 Paris
 
Thanks
Thank you all for your interest and for reading about our project!
Thank you for your financial participation to support this project!
Thank you for sharing this project with the different people around you!
A huge thank you to all those who have helped us these last 10 years, by a moral support, by a financial support, by regular encouragements, your help is precious! The list is long!
And a special thanks to Margo, to Léo in the Landes, to Fabien and Philippe at the bistro Chez Lui and to Kamel and Yacine at Achi.
A big thank you also to Dominika for her time and patience.
And thanks to Jeanne for her help and support in the realization of this page.

Photo credits: Antoine Leroux, Jeanne Vaillant, Jean Charles Vaillant, Guillaume Pavageau, Léo Barré