2023-11-06 12:35:36
A Crous dish whose ingredients are unlike anything? A plate in which the taste or the sight do not allow you to separate peppers from carrots? We’ve all experienced it at least once. Alexandre, a scholarship student in his 6th year of pharmacy in Bordeaux, decided to do a concept on TikTok : since 2020, he posts his meal of the day several times a week and dissects it with humor. A longevity record for a subject that we wrongly imagine to be repetitive.
“In 2020, on the networks, it was the time of tasting videos. Accounts like Poppi Bhl were posting their tastings of rather expensive products and I said to myself why not make a parody of the same thing, with my means? » This is when the content of Alexcipient was born, which had already launched in 2019 with humorous videos “but which did not work”. “Maybe I wasn’t funny back then,” jokes the young man.
A success… from the first video
Funny, at least it is today. Melon, bolo spaghetti, thin slices of rosette, free bread, rice-zucchini-fish, Christmas meals, taste week, he tastes his Crous dishes in front of the camera. His first TikTok video on the subject is devoted to a (simple) tomato-cucumber starter, a dish of fries, ratatouille and cordon bleu, then apple cake for dessert.
“It worked from the first video, I didn’t expect it at all,” Alexandre is still surprised: “I had filmed and posted my video and I went out to play sports with a friend, an hour in a park. When I came back, I had gained 10,000 subscribers! » Subscribers who ask for more and are always there, even when he is away for a few weeks during school holidays for example, and the Crous is closed.
The dishes, although they are not always visually appealing, are to his liking the vast majority. “Some people tell me that I should be sponsored by the Crous! », says the pharma student.
The activity still takes him a little over an hour, “a 30-minute round trip to the Crous, then 30 minutes to film myself and 15 minutes of editing”, which he doesn’t always have: “I “I don’t have a very fast pace”, admits the student, “and it’s true that I would like to do more, but sometimes I have too much work with my studies or when I’m in midterms.” The return trip with his Tupperware dates from Covid, when barrier gestures prevented students from eating on site and when they could bring their own containers. The possibility remained and since then when he does not eat there, he brings his meal home.
“It’s a great solution for students, especially scholarship holders”
“The quantity of dishes varies: sometimes it is very good, but above all for one euro it is always very profitable. Sometimes it’s really not good,” describes the man who, in fact, is the best ambassador of the dishes in his university restaurant: “It’s a great solution for students, especially scholarship holders. Even if sometimes 3.30 euros for pasta, it is still less profitable for those who are not. »
Despite everything, he notes that “for a year or two, the quantities have decreased. In my UK in Bordeaux, we had five stands, so five different dishes, the quantities were very good and it was always very good! » After Covid, the university restaurant adapted its offer and moved to only two stands, the choices being reduced. “There, the quantity and quality have also dropped a little. And we go around in circles a little more than before,” observes the young man. “I feel like we have Thai meatballs every week, it’s not bad but I can’t look forward to them anymore,” laughs Alexandre.
He is not short of advice either. How to pay a euro for scholarship holders, how to manage to leave with your Tupperware, he answers his subscribers’ questions. In the final year of studies, his account will undoubtedly have to change concept next year, when he will no longer have access to Crous. But the young man is not worried.
“I have interactions with people who follow me, I want to try new things so I will let you know at that time,” explains the person who works according to his community and trusts it. A confidence which, with the monetization of TikTok, gives him enough to put a little butter in the spinach (of the Crous).
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