You can be a young urban planner and work for the rehabilitation of old croutons. Five years ago, Franck Wallet left municipal map, cadastre, development projects… for a plan to safeguard and promote unsold bread.
It is by collecting baguettes and cobblestones in Bordeaux bakeries for Les Restos du Coeur that the volunteer becomes aware of the enormous waste. “Charities cannot recover everything, there is always some unsold material that ends up in the trash without any recovery », deplores the young man, now 38 years old, with small round glasses and a helmet of curly brown hair. So how to give a second life to these forgotten shelves?
In his kitchen, the urban planning specialist looks for solutions in order to find a plan B for the loaf of the day before. After several trials, he had the idea of transforming leftovers into breadcrumbs and incorporating this flour substitute into new products. “I started by making cookies, then I realized that I had a raw material with multiple possibilities, which brought taste and crispness and kept for several months. » Only problem, traders do not have time to spend long hours to smash their abandoned sticks.
“Magic Powder”
Never mind ! The ingenious Franck Wallet designs the Crumbler, an anti-waste grinder capable of swallowing 60 kilos to 200 kilos (depending on the three models offered) of bread of any shape and consistency, in just one hour. By varying the type of bread, its hardness, the flour replacement rate, the “magic powder” makes it possible to make all kinds of biscuits but also pizza dough, savory or sweet pie bases… And even new breads!
Today at the head of Expliceat, a start-up specializing in the fight against food waste, the Bordelais has sold 250 machines, mainly to artisan bakers seduced by the idea of giving a second life to their unsold products, while by saving money and participating in the fight against waste. “Each of our customers recycles an average of two to three tons of bread per year », assures the inventor. With more than 33,000 artisan bakeries and pastries listed in France, the market potential is enormous.
Thanks to the Crumbler, “in less than a year, the expense was amortized by savings on flour and sales of ‘recycled bread’ products”, according to the manager of Les Saveurs de Wagram.
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