The disappearance of the artisan baker in the Netherlands
August 7, 2019. Jechiam Gural
Nostalgia is great and small scale business and diversity is important to ensure livable European cities. Ammehoela! A Dutch word referring to King Amanoellah of Afghanistan (1892-1960) who tried to modernize his country.
A large number of bakeries in the Netherlands are about to disappear. It is said that a quarter to one third of the bakeries (nl) cannot find successors now that many bakers are retiring. Some believe (nl) that bakers are to blame for this; they have sold their souls to laziness, i.e. have become too much dependent on the large suppliers of raw materials. Others blame it on the falling bread consumption in the Netherlands (nl). Simply said, the reality is more complex.
There is no more joyful of a job than being a baker!
Ammehoela! Which means no way in Dutch. The children of these bakers know better. Why would you work so hard when we have been floating around for a while in a society where there are easier methods to make money. Renting out your house with Airbnb is better money than working romantically with your hands and selling artisan bread. Borrowing money, buying baked stones and reselling these assets is how you make smart profit these days. Do less, earn more that’s the way to go.
Consumers expect goods above all to stay consistent. They demand scalable, efficient, uniform products that are safe. To balance it out, they prefer these goods to be packed in slogans containing the words made with love and environmentally healthy.
Bread made by the artisan baker, supermarket bread, or bread delivered at the touch of a button at home? It doesn’t seem to matter these days. But the disappearance of the craftsman from our city streets will reduce the liveability of our growing cities in the long term. Craftsmanship offers much more to society than plain short term economic benefits .
In the big cities, small-scale, artisan baking seems to be back in fashion. However, if you want to survive outside these fancy area’s as a traditional baker then you have to innovate.
This is how we try to innovate
The bakery is traditionally suitable to demonstrate how waste products can be reused. In Baking Lab we demonstrate how old bread is reused as a bread improver, or how a bakery becomes a low-threshold platform for education & science. We collaborate. Together with a university we shared information about food & health and exchanged services with other educational companies to support each others activities.
During co-creation sessions and workshops that we organize at Baking Lab, we use gamification principles, which help increase the engagement of our audience in the co-creation proces of finding new artisan ways for what we are doing. The combination of classical knowledge (craftsmanship), and new methods (IT & gamification) promotes new ideas required to pave the way for future proof artisanal business models. Watch de video about gamification below.
More about Ammehoela and the disappearance of craftsmanship
“This king Amanoellah wanted to reform his country to a Western model. In the late 1920s fierce protests arose against his reforms, for example against the requirement that everyone in Kabul should wear Western clothing. The protests led to an uprising and in 1929 he was forced to give up the throne. Amanoellah lived the rest of his life in exile and became a much talked-about society figure in Europe. “
NBC, 22 Jan 2019 [nl]: “For years, supermarkets have been selling the most bread in the Netherlands. Of all the bread that Dutch eat, 66% is bought in supermarkets. The sale of bread at artisan bakers has been under pressure for years and that also applies to 2018. This trend can be seen not only in the Netherlands, but also in the surrounding countries. ”
The Ammehoela interjection is according to the Dutch language website Onze Taal (our language) goes back to one person: King Amanoellah of Afghanistan (1892-1960).
New York Times (November 10, 2019) : French Baguettes From a Vending Machine? What a Tragedy…