Radish leaves, miniature sprout leaves, miniature pepper leaves, sea verdolaga, and verdolaga leaves. These are the new products that are in the PUURGroenten greenhouses this year. Han and Saskia Lammers focus on the catering industry with these kinds of special products. “Chefs are choosing actual vegetables increasingly often, instead of just purées and jellies. Because of that, catering has become an interesting market. To us, but also to the other Dutch horticultural companies.”
In 2012, it was not going well with Dutch horticulture. On the contrary, the crisis was in full swing after the EHEC year. Yet Han and Saskia Lammers started a new horticulture company. Not a giant company, they don’t have endless hectares of tomatoes, but a very modest greenhouse. Indeed, with 0.22 hectare, the area could actually be called small for a modern horticulture company. But the greenhouse holds 200 products, that means 11 metres per product on average, how is that possible? “We mostly cultivate baby vegetables,” Han explains. “And some edible flowers and herbs. It is a very small market: we supply our vegetables to one wholesaler, Rungis, and directly to the users.” Those users are mostly high-end catering companies: the world’s chefs.
Customer contact
Catering is now also slowly getting out of the crisis, but in 2012, that sector was still in a lot of trouble. “By supplying quality and offering a distinctive product range, we managed to gain a foothold. That is impossible with two or three types of lettuce.” The cultivators are regularly in contact with their customers. “If we don’t have a product, we immediately offer an alternative. Solid yellow pansies instead of with tiger stripes, for example, or red pak-soi cabbage instead of shanghai.”
Product range is also decided in consultation. “We always supplied East-Indian cherry leaves of 2 and 4 centimetre. But one customer asked for ten-centimetre leaves. Now we even have a customer who wants the entire top of the East-Indian cherry on their plates . If you are capable of supplying that, you become valuable as producer to buyers. But in order to achieve that, you need to know there’s demand for it.”
New products
New products are also selected in consultation with customers. “This year we introduced sprout leaves, at the request of Michel van der Kroft, ’t Nonnetje**, in Harderwijk. He prepares an entire stalk of sprouts, and he wanted to use sprout leaves with that.” But is that profitable for PUURGroenten, cultivating one type of vegetables for one customer who just wants some leaves during the sprout season? “It concerns about ten punnets per week. Of course, it’s not a lot, but we are very flexible,” Han explains. “Because we are in charge of the entire cultivation, and we cultivate on water, we can easily scale up of down. And because you have the product, you can get other people excited for it as well. We have 2,100 followers on Facebook. We might not get a lot of responses or likes, but we have noticed that chefs order products they have seen on Facebook. It turns out there’s demand for it anyway.”
Sending
The products of PUURGroenten are harvested fresh daily, packed especially and then sent. That is just done with the use of PostNL. “When we started five years ago, there were no other options,” Han says. “We have seen much more becoming possible with parcel post, and in the delivery of fresh. We are still too small for same-day-delivery, but it is one of our wishes for the future.” And they have more wishes for the future. Supplying consumers, for example. “That involves after-sales, for which you need people, but maybe in a year or two? We already often get requests from cookery clubs. That isn’t catering officially, but we could do that if they wanted the products. And as of recently we also started supplying a surprise kit, containing all sorts of products to test. It is already very popular with catering, but could also do very well on the consumer market.”
Many different products
By now, Han and Saskia have their hands full with catering. In recent months they started noticing that catering is coming out of the crisis.The company is visited more often by chefs who want to start their own restaurant. “And we have seen that there’s more attention for vegetables. Chefs tend to lean towards an 80-20 relation: more vegetables and less proteins. Moreover, they are choosing purées and jellies less often, in favour of actual vegetables. That results in an interesting market. For us, but also for the rest of the Netherlands cultivating fruits and vegetables.”
Han isn’t scared of more competition when he says this. “The increasing attention on vegetables can be seen everywhere: from restaurants to consumers. We specifically focus on the higher catering segment. That is top-class sport, and cannot just be started with.” PUURGroenten sows automatically , but everything else is done by hand. “If you live from a ten-cent margin per kilogram, you tend to be a bit easier with your products. Costs have to be kept low then. Everything here is done manually, and the bars are high for every product, it has to be.” Because, Han admits, he personally is quite a fusspot. “But that is necessary! We are working with a very critical market. Sometimes you think a product is good, but it won’t have the right flavour. You have to notice that, and you have to want to improve that, or you won’t last in this market. When we were in agriculture we supplied our product, and never heard back. Now, our buyers are very critical, and that keeps us sharp.”
For more information:
PUURGroenten
Han en Saskia Lammers
Kolhornerweg 4A
Middenmeer, the Netherlands
+31 (0)6 421 217 65
www.puurgroenten.com
info@puurgroenten.nl