The story of the project

The genesis

As the announcement of the restaurant closures came down, a team of student entrepreneurs from UCLouvain got to work to help restaurant owners. They launched the "Help for Restaurateurs #Covid19" initiative as a Facebook group that now has over 52,000 members and has helped over 500 restaurateurs or wholesalers.

But they did not want to stop there. They understood that there was a citizen will to help small Belgian companies and to change the way of consuming, in particular by turning to local products. 

The project

This is how the idea of "La Vitrine Locale" was born in the mind of Pierre Peckel, a 25 year old student at UCLouvain and passionate about entrepreneurship. 

After a few days of research, he launched "La Vitrine Locale", a local e-commerce site that offers articles from Belgian producers and craftsmen. He mainly wanted to help small structures that don't always have the means to digitalize their activities. 

The Aperitive boxes

In November 2020, six months after the launch of our platform, several companies contacted us with a new challenge to solve. Indeed, because of the Covid crisis, it was difficult for these companies to organise "Team Building" type activities with their employees. 

That's when we introduced our 100% Belgian Aperitif Packs that can be delivered directly to the home of the company members in order to organise a virtual activity. 

These Aperitive boxes have been a great success and to date almost 10,000 Belgians have enjoyed a gourmet box filled with local products.

Our ambition is to continue to expand our portfolio of services for companies by offering, for example, local aperitifs, corporate gifts...