Karine & Jeff
"Our expertise
CREATION OF RECIPES
In order to offer consumers authentic and tasty ready-made meals, we take great care in formulating our recipes, combining the know-how of culinary traditions and the originality of our own creative touch.
Today, we offer a hundred organic recipes for all meals, from breakfast to dinner. This range reflects our dual attachment to our southwestern region and to the culinary traditions of the world, with a vast choice of recipes based on local know-how - local recipes, soups, vegetable purées, cereals, natural vegetables... - and recipes evocative of travels - Italy, West Indies, South America, India, Africa
CHOICE AND ORIGIN OF INGREDIENTS
To make a good dish, you first need good products. This is why we select with the greatest care the ingredients that go into our recipes.
The products we use are all organically grown. They come mainly from local producers, with whom we have a close relationship. These products are carefully selected according to their gustatory qualities and to a production in conformity with our ethical values.
The vegetables come from about thirty producers,
mainly located in the southwest region. The olive and sunflower oils used in the recipes are produced by farmers who share our passion for taste and our quality requirements. For the travel recipes, the coral lentils from Turkey, the quinoa from Bolivia, the spices from India, Ceylon and Madagascar are selected according to the same criteria of excellence.
LOCATION OF THE FACTORY
The location of our company, at the foot of the Montagne Noire, allows us to benefit from the very pure water of the Haut-Languedoc Regional Natural Park.
COOKING PROCESS
The recipes are prepared, cooked and packaged according to processes that we have specially developed to express all the flavors and preserve all the nutritional qualities of the ingredients that compose them, in the most natural way possible and without overcooking.
These recipes do not contain any additives (preservatives, flavors, thickeners, stabilizers, coloring).
Low temperature cooking allows to respect the flavours. It is also a process that consumes few resources and energy, which brings safety and comfort to our production team.
To respect the specific cooking time of each ingredient, they are incorporated progressively into the preparation. For a fair cooking, the preparation finishes cooking naturally during the sterilization in autoclave.
PACKAGING
We have chosen to present our recipes in glass jars that allow you to appreciate their texture and color before opening. These jars, which can be recycled, reflect the quality of our cooking as well as our environmental commitments.
Our story
A story of love, family and creativity...
THE MEETING
More than 30 years ago, Karine and Jeff met. Imagine a reserved young girl, passionate about dance and vibrant with the desire to learn. Little by little, an idea germinated in Karine's mind, until it became a certainty: "To feel pleasure, you have to be creative. From then on, Karine created her own choreographies that she happily performed for entire afternoons.
Now imagine a young man, passionate about the guitar, for whom music symbolizes Art par excellence. Jeff will blossom during 10 years by becoming a professional musician.
Twenty years later, he still raves with the same fervor: "Music has made me sensitive to beauty, taught me to listen, and given me the opportunity to create freely and with pleasure.
One day, a romance was born between the dancer and the musician. Karine & Jeff mutually transform themselves. For Karine, "the doors of the world open": she discovers in Jeff the ideal partner. When they get married, Karine is 18 years old, Jeff is 27.
After 30 years of marriage, the flame is not extinguished: they are still side by side, supporting each other, setting ever more ambitious goals. Goals that they will reach... together.
THE JOURNEY
At the dawn of their twenties, Karine and Jeff were already aware of the consumerist model we indulge in in our Western societies.
Without the slightest idea of the place they will occupy one day in the "organic world", they already sense the importance that nature, the environment and the human being will have in their future professional life.
Nevertheless, Jeff, who earns his living in a store specializing in the sale of musical instruments, would gladly settle for love and fresh water.
Karine, already daring, dreams of freedom and decides to fulfill one of her dreams: joining a dance school in Los Angeles. Madly in love, the young musician chooses to follow his muse - to America!
From this decision will be born their first common trip, Central America, then South America... Here is the beginning of a passion for travel, for the discovery of landscapes, culinary traditions, human beings and their diversity...
After a difficult return to France, where boredom could appear at any moment in a life that did not allow them to blossom, Karine and Jeff left again. This time, direction the Middle East through Europe, then the Cape of Good Hope through Africa.
HAPPINESS IS IN THE POT: BIRTH
One day, the evidence is obvious: what they have always been passionate about, what they have always done together, is cooking. The idea was born.
When they returned to France in 1999, Karine and Jeff settled in the southwest of France, in the village of Jegun. The couple bought a truck, some pots and started cooking.
It was easy, at least on the surface. They had to get up at the crack of dawn to go to the markets and fairs of France to offer the dishes prepared in the kitchen of the family home.
Luck smiled on Karine in the form of two business creation contests, which she won easily. "I went to participate in the "Défi Jeune" of the region with my basket, my little pots that were not sterilized. I had nine minutes to convince," Karine recalls. Convinced, all the members of the jury wanted to taste her dishes.
The prize won is used to create a first workshop of culinary creation.
Joachim, the couple's fourth child, now twenty-two years old, was born at the same time as this project to set up a business with an evocative name: Le Bonheur est dans le Pot.
THE KITCHENS OF TOULOUSE
At the end of 2001, Karine and Jeff decided to give their project a boost. After applying for loans from banks, they invested in new pots and also left the Gers to move to Toulouse with their family and equipment.
In a larger kitchen-studio, Jeff and Karine, more than ever inspired by world cuisine, enriched their range of recipes.
In 2005, the accounts are balanced. The company is hiring. The range of ready-made meals concocted from cereals and vegetables has diversified over the months.
For Karine, the Thai Soup remains one of the most successful products of the brand. "In addition to its nutritional and taste qualities, it holds the promise of pleasing everyone, children, the elderly, adults concerned about taste, and above all, it comforts, it gives the opportunity to get together around a universally friendly dish, soup, at the time of day most conducive to pleasure: the evening."
The company's situation improves, and in the years that follow, Karine and Jeff begin to present their products at international trade shows: in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain... and even in Hong Kong.
LES CUISINES DE REVEL: A NEW BEGINNING
In 2011, the workshop had become old, cramped, in short... unsuitable. It was time to sketch the plans for a new workshop to accommodate the growing needs of the family business.
A great deal of attention was given to the choice of a location with the right energy. Karine and Jeff consulted a specialist in geobiology to determine the ideal location for the workshop.
They finally chose a piece of land that had never been cultivated, and therefore free of any chemical or GMO treatment.
The year 2011 marks the arrival of Karine & Jeff in the Bio valée Lauragais, at the foot of the Montagne Noire, where the pure water of the nearby Haut-Languedoc Regional Natural Park flows. It is this water that will be used in the composition of the recipes.
FROM FRANCE TO THE UNITED STATES, VIA EUROPE
These new facilities will allow Karine & Jeff to improve its production capacity and to further improve the quality of its recipes.
Innovation is also on the agenda: in 2013, Manuel, the couple's eldest son, opened the first organic boutique restaurant in Toulouse.
In 2015, Karine received the Innovation Trophy, rewarding female entrepreneurship.
However, Karine will not stop there and continues her mission: more than ever, she wishes to transmit her passion for healthy food and intends to play an active role in health and wellness education.
It's time to go international. The summer of 2015 is the occasion for two study and prospecting trips to the United States... The recipes were very well received, so that in October of this year 2015, the American and Canadian distributors will receive the first deliveries.
After thirty years together, marketing in Europe, North America and Canada, Karine and Jeff still share the belief that one of the fundamental values of life is organic. They are committed to making this known, with passion and sensitivity, while bearing witness to the fact that one can live "differently"."
From Karinejeff.fr
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