A man walks into a bar…
Sounds like a joke, right?
But this story is much more than a joke.

So we’re sitting in a bar in our home town, among other people, just starting to sip our late afternoon glass of wine, most of us enjoying the spring sunshine, some alone, some in company.

Suddenly an old man enters the bar with a basket and a cooler, as if he were about to start a pique nique in the town centre. He approaches and introduces himself as a farmer from “la Vallée de La Brévine” – a nearby valley famous for its record low temperatures in winter (it can go as low as -41°C!).

With his coolers and baskets full of homemade sausages and cheeses, he begins to offer us his wares. Surprised by this unexpected vendor, we first looked at the barman to see if he agrees with the farmer selling his products in his bar.

Apparently he does, and we ask the friendly man for more information about the good-looking food he’s bringing in from the cold valley. We decide to buy some cheese, give him a nice tip and he moves on to the next table. Because we are the first to buy, other visitors gain confidence and many buy some of his homemade goods.

But why put the nice smelling cheeses and sausages in our bags? Why not have them as an “aperitivo”? So we ask the barman if he doesn’t mind us eating the farmer’s products, and he even offers us a cutting board to do so.
Suddenly, everyone in the bar was opening the cheese from its sous-vide packaging and asking for cutting boards to taste the products of “La Brévine”.

Wine and beer sales immediately take off, and the more than happy bartender decides to go to the nearby bakery to buy some bread, which he then offers to his customers to go with the cheese and sausages.People gather around the bar to share the bread and cheese, and an unexpected sense of community develops between the unknown customers of both the bar and the old farmer…

What some time ago, and in other cultures, might have seemed like common sense, the sharing of small and individual businesses for the benefit of all, now seems like a disruptive, even revolutionary, act of “intrusion”. But the barman in charge immediately recognised the added value that the farmer brought to his own business, and by even joining the nearby bakery, a joint venture was created, to the delight of his aperitivo-craving customers.

Personally, this is the kind of situation I miss in most of today’s socio-economic networks, because it creates value for everyone involved, and everyone ends up in a ‘win’ situation. When we asked the man if he came to the city often, he replied that he didn’t actually – it’s too hard to find an affordable parking space for his van. Well, hey, here’s the design challenge: how can we provide a platform for people like the farmer from La Brévine to make it easier for him and others to come into the nearby towns, offer their goods and add value to existing businesses?

-> To be continued!