Post by Mathieu Grosso

Three years ago, a weekend at my grandmother's place on the île d'Oléron. With Mateo Beacco and Alex Chataigner, we're driving around the island visiting every store we can find. We shake hands with butchers, get kicked out of a Leclerc, tell everyone we're doing "field research for HEC and École Polytechnique". My grandmother Linette watches us leave each morning, not quite sure what we're up to. That's where Ida was born. A shared intuition: fresh produce is a massive problem, poorly addressed, and we can do something about it. Mateo Beacco. A hundred ideas a minute. A always pushing forward. The kind of relentless drive that pulls a whole company in its wake. Alex Chataigner. Shows up, works until it's done, never complains. He is the constant pull back to ground truth - what actually works, not what sounds good. Soon after, Guillaume le Dieu de Ville connects us to Arthur de Fouquières, who opens his stores in Switzerland as our playground. We test, we break things, we start over. We learn. Summer 2022, building every night until god knows when with Louis Bertolotti and Christopher Heim. Nights that end at 5am. Marc Chevrière and Jimi M. join the adventure. We build Ida's foundations in that intensity — a mix of exhaustion and permanent excitement. And between the sprints, there were offsites at Mateo's place in Normandy. Paintball, endless conversations, heated Smash Bros sessions (which I won, for the record), the kind of moments that actually bond a team. In three years, Ida deployed in thousands of stores and helped avoid thousands of tons of food waste. We became the European leader in fresh. Today, Ida joins RELEX Solutions and becomes RELEX Fresh. What drives me: keep building things that matter. Tools that transform the daily life of store teams. AI in service of real impact, not buzzwords. This work made me thrive for three years at Ida. I want to keep that going at RELEX. Thanks to Mikko Kärkkäinen, Anni Tuulos, Ville Hämäläinen, Arttu Takala, Amanda Mosseri Oren, Tor Tigerstedt, Tom Charlton and all the Relexians for the welcome. Thanks also to Benjamin Galand, Clément Barnetche at @Operandi for helping make this deal happen. And to Pierre Entremont for the support along this project ! And thanks to everyone who made this adventure possible. Let's build the world reference for fresh. Together.