Approval for Pilot Participatory Supermarket

In 2020/2021, the Vienna Business Agency for the first time set a funding focus on the topic of food with the call »Urban Food« with the aim of promoting creative industries.

In the next thirty years, almost ten billion people worldwide, two thirds of them living in cities, will have to be supplied with food. Security of supply and quality must be guaranteed, and regionality and sustainability play an essential role here. Cities need long-term alternatives to conventional food production to remain liveable.
Excerpt from the call »Urban Food« of the Vienna Business Agency

In cooperation, we, the MILA association and stape e.U., have designed the project »Pilot Participatory Supermarket«. We are very happy about the funding and the joint activities! An important step on the way to a participatory supermarket!

The project: Pilot Participatory Supermarket

The »Pilot Participatory Supermarket« is the social innovation of using a space with thousands of people – organised collectively, at eye level. Houses are the structural framework, but life in them needs to be organised! We are preparing the first participatory supermarket in Austria: Open to everyone who wants to buy good, low price food and who wants to work, shape and own the market.

Markets have been social places at all times and in all cultures. We are reviving this central function in the urban fabric through a new way of doing business together. We will operate a meeting place – a beehive – whose communal activities contribute to the blossoming of the neighbourhood: a place that is a hub for food and local supplies, a marketplace for local producers – and a vibrant place in the quarter, for small businesses to benefit.

The participatory supermarket toolbox bundles the processes developed, methods applied and lessons learnt in order to scale the innovative participatory supermarket business concept with other founders: throughout Austria and beyond.