It was raining in the old centre of Utrecht. Pouring. We arrived drenched. Bags and coats were allowed out and remained over the seats surrounding a large table. We were standing with a select group in The Cookie Factory concept store, it was a pre-opening for the grand opening planned in May for shoppers. The concept store is a pastel-coloured funny little factory with play buttons for a spinning track upstairs with bags of cake. There is a fantasy cake machine that does nothing but can turn lights on and off. Fun for the kids. And for us.
All kinds of biscuits were laid out on a big table. Biscuits wrapped, unwrapped - in pieces or whole. Big and small.
The concept store.
The shop is meant for direct contact with shoppers. A kind of experience, an opportunity to taste and buy something. For communicating what they stand for. And they stand for something. Emphasised by an inspired team.
How do you stand for something? What makes you really stand for something? Will we soon pierce right through this overly fancy marketing story, or is there really a genuine value, they say themselves a driven social entrepreneurship?
The personal story begins in Utrecht at a café. A café in the middle of Utrecht that had a run of customers going for a cup of coffee. The café was doing okay, it had a steady turn over and the owner was satisfied with little it seemed.
Until. The owner of the shop was faced with a problem, his son had autism and always needed more attention, school and also privately this caused adjustments and challenges. His son had come from school with heavy counselling and a sort of social ´manual´ - and could not fully participate in the general society. His son was unhappy. A solution was sought, to teach him to bake biscuits - to go with the coffee in the family-owned café.
This personal problem, and the solution created, made the shop in Utrecht very popular, people loved the attention to the cookies with their coffee and found the owner's personal story immensely inspiring. The café grew rapidly in turnover and was titled and subsidised as a social workshop. It employed a few autistic boys, and they made the cookies there on a step-by-step recipe and on a scheme that worked for them.
The café was a commercial and social success.
Until. Too many people came, too many people wanted too many cookies. And the owner could not sell ´no´; his business was doing very well. However, the pressure on the autistic youngsters who needed to be protected from work stress was increasing, and this escalated when one of the boys fell out. Was it his son? He doesn't say. It was painful.
In fact, from one day to the next, the café was CLOSED.
Help came from the network of autistic young people, there is a social workshop in a nearby town with all kinds of people working with a ‘distance to the labour market’. Not only autistic people work there, but also people with refugee status, or Down's syndrome. A broader target group and a larger workshop. The cookies, it was thought, were to be made on demand in that workshop, and the young people from The Cookie Factory from Utrecht could also go there for work. The café was running well again, people came to drink coffee again in abundance, and the share of cookies in the social workshop in the nearby town became significant. It was growing, but not enough to take over the entire workshop. It still needed volume for that. It grew steadily.
Until. Corona came and the café had to CLOSE.
The sheltered workshop was allowed to continue operating, but also faced difficulties. Many orders for the catering industry did not go through. One had to be inventive. The Cookie factory went for a web shop and delivery of flat biscuits through the letterbox. A sort of cake with a solid bottom in a cardboard box precisely measured. Rather big cakes, and numbers were increasing. Yes, these cakes created huge volume, and people eagerly bought the cakes through the website.
Coffee had to be made at home, cake could be delivered.
It was a great success, and almost the entire social workshop was owned by The Cookie Factory.
Until. Corona was gone again. The café had to be OPENED again.
But the owner could no longer handle the café. And attention had turned so much to cake, and in that web shop. The decision was made to close the café and instead grow in cake and buy up the capacity of the entire social workshop in the nearby town. Collaborations were sought and found with well-known retailers. The volume of cake increased.
It was a commercial growth.
Until. The owner, after a price negotiation, cried out ‘I'm just selling cake!’
And then the crisis really began. Because in the quest for survival, a slightly different positioning was chosen each time. Another pivot - as if it were a checkered game board. One thing led to another and the pivot aimed at positioning in the market turned to more and more sales.
But: out went the direct and social bonding with his son, out went the coffee-with-a-biscuit, out went the consumer contact. And out went his social mission?
Burned out. Was the owner.
Until. He went back to his values. He went back to his community, primarily that of autistic people and asked what was really needed. People at a distance from the labour market, do not choose that distance themselves. It became his social mission more than ever!
And he wanted coffee again. He wanted direct contact with his customers again.
And we were in the concept store in the middle of Utrecht. Party time. The company exists 10 years.