The renewal of short food supply chains in France comes up against the question of social innovation through the development of initiatives aimed at facilitating access to quality food to precarious consumers. This article shows the value of analyzing these initiatives to understand the social mechanisms of social innovation building and to explore the conditions of its scaling-up. The approach rests on a combination of economic sociology, and the care approach, allowing the integration of persons and their socio-political context in the analysis of the relational dynamics which build innovation. Based on two case studies, results show how social innovation develops through new kinds of links and resources valuing daily life experience. They invite us to consider that its transformative capacity both relies on products decoupled from these links and on the evolution of persons’ status. The article urges a deepening of the analysis of social innovation through short supply chains, and conversely.JEL Codes: O35, Q13, Q18, A13