What constitutes a good price?

Food is too cheap! Food is too expensive! Discussions about pricing seem to go round in circles. But it's actually quite simple: We want to create as much of a positive impact as possible – for people and the planet – at the lowest possible price.

Low food prices make us angry. They don't reflect what it really costs family farmers to grow food sustainably. Make no mistake, these prices rarely provide a living wage. And that needs to change. It's why gebana exists.

So, do high food prices make us happy? No. Higher prices don't automatically mean a greater impact or better quality. They usually mean higher profits for retailers or brands and sometimes, they're simply the result of inefficiency. And that makes us angry. High prices are devastating for impoverished people and can even be counterproductive in terms of sustainability. An affordable product that creates the same impact as a more expensive product saves money. And this money can then be invested in other meaningful projects!

Our goal must therefore be to maximise the positive impact while also reducing prices. This may sound paradoxical, but it's not. For example, if we were to sell a product that provides a particular level of income for 10 francs, it wouldn't be as good as if we were to sell it for 5 francs. As a gebana customer, you could then buy 2 and create twice the impact. And if you gave one away, you'd also be replacing someone else's less sustainable purchase.

That's why at gebana, we ask ourselves the same 2 questions every day: How can we create a greater impact without increasing the price? And how can we drop the price without reducing the positive impact? Either one brings us closer to achieving our goal. But to succeed, we need to become more efficient and better organised, and we need to make the right decisions.

We've already had some success and as a result, we have dropped some of our prices. To read more about this, visit our blog.