“Good margins with chanterelles”

MushroomXL is still a young company that has been operating from the Food Center Forepark in The Hague, the Netherlands, for three years now. During the first two years MushroomXL was less visible, because they didn’t yet operate from their own building. After a recent move to a building near the entrance to the Forepark, owner Aniel Sahiboe is already thinking about a renovation. “I started with two or three customers, but hundreds of customers now know how to find me,” he says. He points to a van parked in front of his unit. “They come from all over the Netherlands. That’s the van of a customer from Hoogeveen.”

Business is therefore going well. It’s easier to find him, visiting customers enjoy coming back to him, and customers who order continue to place repeat orders. Many catering service entrepreneurs do their purchasing from MushroomXL, which also accounts for the company’s rapid growth. “I’m getting more and more Chinese customers as well. I try to make the lives of chefs as easy as possible, they don’t want to stand in their kitchen slicing products for hours anymore either. There’s a lot of competition, and that’s why it’s important you have great service. Quality, attention, being flexible towards customers, I take that to the next level. When customers ring me on Sunday, I try to help them as much as possible.”

As suggested by the name MushroomXL, Aniel trades mushrooms. “There’s much competition in the field of mushrooms. I have the advantage that I’m the only one with a broad range at the Forepark. Yet it remains difficult to make a living with mushrooms. Margins are low and shelf lives are sensitive. That’s why I continued to develop myself into a one-stop-shop with a broad range of Dutch vegetables, from cut to unprocessed vegetables. I have fruit as an additional assortment.”

Nowadays, mushrooms are mostly the advertisement for MushroomXL. Throughout the year, Aniel has a broad range, but it becomes really great once the wild mushroom season starts, according to him. “My warehouse is full to the brim then. Chanterelles do very well, it’s very difficult to stock up on that. Once I receive one pallet, I should already arrange for the next one to arrive,” he says. “But cep, the porcini mushroom, also does well. In the produced range, oyster mushrooms and shiitakes are more and more popular varieties.”

MushroomXL started three years ago. “I’ve worked in the food branch for years, and I made sure those companies grew. I wanted the same for myself. I started small from Fruithandel Verweij’s building, which was recently taken over by Best AGF. A few months ago I moved to my own building. I’ve been growing even more ever since.”

MushroomXL’s building is a cash & carry location with two large cooling cells and space to process the orders. Because it is both busy with customers walking in and processing orders, a renovation is about to start to improve routing and expand cooling capacity. Besides, Aniel continues to strive for one empty cooling cell at the end of the day. That’s a concession he makes to service. “I don’t want stocks, but fresh supply every day. When it’s gone, it’s gone, and my customers know that.”