Ariadna Serra owned a company that gave educational bicycle tours to American and French children through the city of Barcelona. “With the covid pandemic, tourism disappeared, so we had to reinvent ourselves. In a video call with the company guides, we thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of the bicycles to transport packages,” recalls Serra. A few weeks later, in July 2020, they formed the non-profit cooperative Les Mercedes. “It is the name of one of my grandmothers, a woman who already rode a bicycle in the fifties of the last century. Furthermore, she is a close name, not like most courier companies,” says the entrepreneur.
Currently, Les Mercedes is made up of five partners: Ana Tamer, Marie Dufouleur, Ariadna Serra, Geraldine Caillaud and Laura Salvador. They themselves, with the help of three employees, are the ones who get behind the wheel of the eight vehicles that the company has. The fleet is made up of a conventional bicycle, a tricycle, a cargo bicycle, two electric bicycles and two electric motorcycles (one of them prepared to transport cold products). As a curiosity, it should be noted that all the vehicles have been named after famous women, such as Tina Turner, Virginia Wolf or Lola Flores. They cycle through the city of Barcelona and some neighborhoods of cities such as Hospitalet del Llobregat or Santa Coloma de Gramenet and transport all types of products: from documentation to food from greengrocers or pastry shops.
Serra emphasizes that in some way they have become part of the problem that Barcelona has with tourism to be part of the solution for mobility free of bad smoke. A crusade that they carry out from the center of the city, as the headquarters of the cooperative is located in the Gòtic neighborhood, near the statue of Columbus. This commitment has earned them various awards and recognitions.
