Very early on, I wanted to change the world. My parents were executives in the public service and, even if they were not particularly involved in politics, we always discussed a lot at the table about major societal issues, the injustices and inequalities that surrounded us. This must have awakened my conscience. I went to ESCP, a business school in Paris, the city where I grew up, but I have always loved cooking, probably thanks to my two grandmothers, who regularly orchestrated family dinners with all the cousins . We ate while talking about cooking. My parents didn’t cook much, and at home it was mostly shellfish and ham and frozen foods. When I finished my studies, I spontaneously turned to the world of gastronomy and applied to Fauchon, place de la Madeleine.
Around the same time, I began to frequent the world of anarchists, libertarians, people in civil disobedience. Not knowing which fight to choose – there are so many! – I started cooking for the militants. Feeding these people was a way of being a resource for them. Thus, while hanging out with starred chefs and discovering truffle polenta at Fauchon, I practiced fighting cuisine, essentially vegetarian for budget reasons, in self-managing, horizontal formats.
I participated in GMO mowing actions or organic picnics in McDonalds. And then I left to work in air business travel, I burnt my carbon footprint in four years, before becoming purchasing director for a Belgian group. It was the big gap between my professional life and my personal life, the week working on marketing campaigns and the weekends in squats or cooking for the activists of Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
“We picked vegetables from the fields in the morning, cooked them in the afternoon and served them in the evening. It was direct, raw, real. »Ariane Delmas
Before sinking into total schizophrenia, I decided to realign my values and my actions. I went to work for a week in an associative restaurant in Marseille. We picked vegetables from the fields in the morning, cooked them in the afternoon and served them in the evening. It was direct, raw, real. This is where I tasted my second polenta, prepared as a lasagna with lots of vegetables. It was a revelation, I understood that it was possible to make gourmet vegetarian dishes and that food could be a lever to change the world.
Shortly after, I met my partners and we created Les Marmites volantes, in 2012. The idea was first a restaurant, good and healthy, based on raw and organic products, then we launched the deliveries of cooking pots to share, which kept the business running. Three years later, we opened a second location, in Montreuil, in Seine-Saint-Denis, and, in 2016, we started delivering the canteen of a private school. Today, we have three restaurants and we provide lunches for seventeen schools, or 1,100 children in total. We show that we can cook good canteen dishes, without spending more since they are mainly vegetable. This is what drives me today: to ensure that children eat better, that everyone can enjoy good and well-made food.