During the crisis years, pre cut veg companies specialising in catering were struggling. Smaller players were absorbed by larger ones or went bankrupt, but the situation is now no longer dire. “It’s recovering enormously,” says Rudolf Sluimer of Flexivers about the market, although that market has changed. Social media, among other things, plays its part in that.
“Chefs prefer doing everything themselves, but this is now changing,” Rudolf continues. While chefs wanted to cut their own vegetables in the past, they’re now more likely to switch to buying cut vegetables. “Four years ago, we still really had to sell ourselves to catering entrepreneurs, that is different now. They can make a profit if they let us do the cutting.” Many kitchens, for example, never properly calculated the costs of personally cutting the vegetables and how much is lost in this process.
Rudolf Sluimer, Flexivers (right)
New and forgotten vegetables
Social media plays its part in this change. Through these channels, restaurants are judged immediately, and photographs of dishes are shared. Because of this, the pressure on catering has increased. “It has an added value for us, because we can vary endlessly with the products. In the past, we mostly produced basic cut fruit and vegetables, we now supply all kinds of fruit and vegetable mixes, vegetable hotchpotch and ready-made salads,” Rudolf explains. New products such as spaghetti vegetables and the rise of forgotten vegetables can be seen in the assortment.
“Many menus were fairly traditional, so that we couldn’t do much with, for instance, forgotten vegetables,” he continues. “We now see that everything is eaten, and even smaller brasseries serve vegetable spaghetti with edible flowers, for example.” Catering is therefore joining in with the health trends seen everywhere. During the Dutch Meatless Week early in March, catering anticipated this trend by putting more vegetables on their menus. Forgotten vegetable mixes, custom-made raw vegetable mixes and vegetable sticks did well that week.
Manual exotics
Some trends turn out to be a hype, one example of this is quinoa. This grain was very popular for a while, with catering as well, but Rudolf has seen demand decreasing. “Fresh mint tea is very popular right now,” he says. Tubers are also becoming popular again. The ‘old-fashioned’ vegetable is once again hip, and that isn’t a bad thing for catering companies. “The margin on these products is much larger than on meat for these companies.”
Avocado and mango are frontrunners, just like on the fresh market. Due to their differing shapes, the exotics can’t be mechanically processed. This is still mostly manual labour. “Restaurants want to be distinctive. We do a lot of custom-made work, so that customers have many options.” Fruit skewers for catering, for instance, can consist of traditional types of fruit, but some caterers add exotics or snack vegetables. “It depends on who your customer is and what their budget is.”
Thinking about menus
Yet there’s a downside as well. Due to the developments in the sector and social media, the general public quickly becomes familiar with innovations. “Everything is possible nowadays. If you want a heart-shaped cucumber, it’s possible,” Rudolf exemplifies. Besides, seasons have disappeared on the market. “In the past, new products were often called odd, but that’s no longer a problem. Back then you had to visit a grower to look at new products, now they just put a photograph on Facebook and the whole world knows about it.”
“We employ four chefs who have plenty of new ideas to develop new products for the kitchens. Because we work with chefs, we speak the same language.” Flexivers’s chefs think about the menus and adjust if necessary, for example, by paying more attention to seasonal vegetables. The availability of these products is better, and prices tend to be friendlier. “That’s better for all parties,” Rudolf says. Throughout the year, and particularly for the holidays, Flexivers thinks about the menus with the caterers. Via an online system, the chefs can calculate per product what the costs will be, how many portions can be made with it, and what the margins are.
Flexivers’s clientele is diverse: from local snack bars to large restaurant chains. For the large chains, many products are produced uniformly. An order for 2,500 kilograms of raw vegetables is no exception. Smaller kitchens have more diversity. Day nurseries and out-of-school childcare are relative newcomers, although developments on this market are very much dependent on government policies. “Fruit is often handed out in the nurseries after school, they have a budget for that,” Rudolf says. “We also often work with themes, for instance, we’ll visit market gardeners with the children, or we invite them to our company.” The assortment isn’t very exciting, the standard fruit is distributed among the children. These institutions don’t ask for exotic or lesser known products as much. “It’s mostly about eating fruit. It’s not really about education, and that’s a shame,” Rudolf says.
Hoping for an old-fashioned summer
Traditionally, the season starts around Easter, but the first months of this year went well for Flexivers. “It’s all coming along nicely, even though this is normally a calmer period,” Rudolf says. “It will be challenging once the season actually starts.” The situation last year was completely different. On 30 December 2016, a fire started in the cutting plant. The fire destroyed part of the building, so that 2017 had to start with a move and the building of a temporary location. “We learned much, but we hope never to experience anything like that again. Despite having a good relationship with the customers, they still wanted their products. That’s just the way of our trade,” he continues. The first days after the fire, the company received much support from suppliers and customers. “We have long relations with our customers and suppliers, and that becomes helpful at such a time.”
After a cold week that closed February, the beginning of March was warmer. “Some of the pavement cafés were already full of people back then.” Rudolf therefore expects a positive season. “There are no indications that it won’t be a good season. As long as nothing weird happens in the world, things are looking good.” In recent years, Dutch summers weren’t always quite summery. He therefore has one wish for this year: an old-fashioned Dutch summer.
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Flexivers
Rudolf Sluimer