“Baker of the future”

When Jan van Maanen opened his baker’s shop in the Dutch village of Katwijk aan den Rijn in 1907, little did he know that over a century later, his name would be attached to 52 stores with over 100,000 weekly customers.

+T hrough a series of acquisitions and collaborations, f our savvy generations of Van Maanens have turned their family business into the Netherlands’ largest artisan bakery. By focusing on the smaller regional cities between Amsterdam and Rotterdam and slowly spreading out from there “like an oil stain”, they’ve been able to keep “logistics in mind in order to avoid unnecessary costs”. And, for some time, the Van Maanens managed perfectly well with their chain of classic bakery shops, until the current management saw that it was time to change things around.

About Henk-Jan Van Maanen

The fourth-generation CEO of Van Maanen went to bakery school in Wageningen before joining his family business 26 years ago. More recently, he completed an MBA at the Business School Netherlands in Buren. “As a little boy I always dreamed of being an entrepreneur in the food sector. I thought I’d become a chef, but having been involved with the family company from childhood it was a natural step to go into the baking business,” he says.

Changing retail-scape

Says CEO Henk-Jan Van Maanen, “In the 60s there were still some 16,000 bakers in the Netherlands, now there are only 2,500. This went hand-in-hand with the impact of the supermarket bakery, which meant that by the 80s and 90s it was all an efficiency game. Then there was the rise of the so-called ‘bakery café’, which is about creating a place where people want to spend time, but also where they come into contact with a more diverse product range than that offered by traditional bakeries.” The classic corner bakery concept no longer fit within this landscape. It’s a familiar conundrum for traditional retailers in a world where the retail-scape is changing faster than many organisations can keep up with.

In 2015, brothers Henk-Jan and Johan van Maanen decided to transition their bakery shops into bakery café’s where connection, not retail, is central. This required a complete overhaul of their company. Tells Henk-Jan Van Maanen, “We looked at bakeries abroad, where it’s quite ordinary to consume bread and pastry at the place you buy it, but it’s still a great departure from where the Dutch bakery market came from. A bakery was just a place you went to buy your bread.

And while the concept of bakery cafés isn’t new, our point of difference is that we make a lot of our products fromscratch on location to guarantee freshness. We are also very innovative in our product range, regularly changing the assortment according to season, in order to give our ‘guests’ – that’s what we call our customers – a surprising taste moment. And, with a lot of personal attention paid to each guest, we’ve seen that people really enjoy spending time at our bakery cafes. If you have a Van Maanen in your neighbourhood, it’s part of your daily ritual. A place to pick up your fresh bread, something for the kids or a special occasion cake, or where you can catch up on the neighbourhood news over a cup of coffee.”

Another major change at the traditional family business was finding a new way of working with employees; by giving them more autonomy. Explains Van Maanen, “This doesn’t mean you give them complete freedom to do what they like – this is often misinterpreted – what it does mean is that you involve them with entrepreneurship and when people are directly involved in business decisions they will have more pleasure in their work and this is carried out in everything they do, also in their interactions with guests.”

Early signs positive

It’s been two years since the changes were implemented, so how are things looking now? “The early signs are positive,” says Van Maanen, “but it often takes some time. This is quite normal, especially the first 3 years after a big change. Turnover-wise it’s been going well, even though keeping costs down remains critical. But we’re already making as much turnover from coffee as from our brown bread. I think the biggest challenge we faced was just to dare to do it, because it takes a lot of courage to do something different,” he says. “Of course, this is harder than it seems – hospitality is a different game than retail; it requires a different mentality and different behaviour - and we, and our people, had to learn to do both. We’ve made mistakes along the way, but I think making mistakes is part of being an entrepreneur. It’s through your missteps that you discover your successes. Innovation is the future, but there is a learning curve involved and that costs money. Still, we have a lot of faith that this will be successful.”

In 2017, the Van Maanens also opened a new style of bakery café in Delft, where baked goods sit side-by-side with inspiring books, homewares, organic produce and cookbooks, and an all-day restaurant where people can enjoy coffee and cake, but also lunch or dinner. This is simply the latest example of Van Maanen’s transformation from “a classic baker to a meeting place where people come together over bread”. Says Van Maanen, “We use this flagship store as a place to test new ideas, which we then roll out to other bakery cafes.” What’s next? “The last few years were all about change and growth and this year is the year of consolidation and organisational optimisation. Other than rolling out our concept further, we have no concrete plans yet.”

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Central production facility

So, how does the Netherlands’ largest artisan bakery operate on a day-to-day basis? The company employs 700 employees in the various bakery shops and bakery cafés, 25 office workers, and 80 people in a 6,000 m 2 central bakery in Rijnsburg. Completed in 2005, the Rijnsburg facility is currently operating at 70% of its capacity, producing a large percentage of Van Maanen’s products, including some 2,400 loaf breads and about 7,000 bread rolls and buns per hour, all under the watchful eye of a Director of Production. Van Maanen also employs two product developers, one each for pastry and bread, who are responsible for developing new and seasonal products. Their latest innovations include a range of crispy sourdough buns with no extra additives and a 600 g chocolate babka, inspired by a recent trip to Tel Aviv. But the team also scour Instagram and Pinterest for inspiration, we’re told, looking for trending topics.

Currently, about 60% of total production at the central Rijnsburg facility is fresh, 30% is frozen and 10% is bake-off. The bread production process is largely automated with a “robot system from Belgium”, which is not only “more efficient” but “prevents strain injuries”. The last piece of equipment purchased for the bakery was an Everbake sourdough installation, “which allows you to make your own sourdough culture”. We chose it because it is dependable with a good price/quality ratio,” says van Maanen.

At the moment, Van Maanen offers 35 bread varieties from loaf breads to stone baked breads, including bread rollls and focaccia, and some 50 types of cakes, cookies and pastries. One of Van Maanen’s biggest sellers in bread is called Duinenbrood , or “dune bread”, a proprietary multi-grain bread made with pure water filtered through the Dutch sand dunes, with 20,000 sold each week. Another unique product that sells by the thousands every week is Van Maanen’s twist on Dutch gevulde koeken (a large cookie stuffed with spijs, or almond paste). And, while the recipe of these traditional cookies is jealously guarded we’re told that part of the cookie production is done at the central bakery in Rijnsburg and delivered frozen, after which it is finished and decorated in the bakery shops, and then baked there.

Largely consumer focused

Of Van Maanen’s 52 bakery cafes, 14 have “100% handmade bread and pastry”, which means that here the bread and pastry are baked on location from freshly made dough. It’s a popular concept that the company intends to continue rolling out in the coming years. And while the bakery cafes continue to be the face of the brand (the web shop is still only generating 4% of turnover), Van Maanen is convinced that online will continue to be increasingly important for future growth.

“We know that people see our shops more and more as a collection point, so if you facilitate online selling, you can still distribute it via your shops,” he says. “I see the online purchasing of basic products as the next big game changer, with people reserving their real-life shopping hours for unique or special products, sold in a convivial environment where shopping is an experience.” Considering that Van Maanen is the Netherlands’ largest artisan bakery, it’s perhaps not surprising that only 20% of the company’s turnover is B-to-B. These clients include wholesaler’s, private label products for specific clients in the bakery sector and to a smaller extent the food service market, e.g. caterers and the hospitality industry. +++

Van Maanen is the Netherlands’ largest artisan bakery, with:

+ A 111-year heritage

+ 52 bakery cafes

+ 1 00,000 customers every week

+ A 6,000 m 2 central bakery

+ 35 bread varieties

+ 50 types of cake, cookies and pastries

+ 7,000 bread rolls and buns produced per hour

+ 2,400 loaf breads produced an hour

Passion for Dough

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