Drives are the real engine behind growth and development. Therefore, in this column, North Dutch entrepreneurs tell about their businesses and motivations.
Beautiful furniture, atmospheric colors and even a moody music. The Nij Smellinghe restaurant in Drachten looks nothing like an average hospital dining room. Even better: people come here to enjoy lunch and dinner who don't need to be in the hospital at all. That is exactly the atmosphere Lex Moerke strives for.
'We make delicious, responsible and healthy food. For everyone. Patients get to eat a la carte for the most part, employees and visitors can get a good meal for little money. To us, everyone is a guest,' said Moerke, who was recruited by the hospital more than eight years ago.
They knew it. The place has been turned upside down. Moerke is a hospitality man at heart. For fifteen years he ran an award-winning hotel-restaurant in Makkum, set up Herman den Blijker restaurants and started several hotels of a famous chain. At the hospital - where he is now responsible for much more - he does exactly what he is good at: giving guests the most enjoyable time possible.
It's been quite a change, but we have a clear vision. Look, I think: for a patient in the hospital, getting food should be the party of the day. And the same is actually true for employees. That's why I fought so hard for á la carte. You can decide on the day what you want. In the fall, we'll have that all over the place.'
Not food preparers, but cooks
There are real cooks in the kitchen, who carefully prepare meals as well as sandwiches and snacks. There is no distinction between food for patients and food for visitors and employees. 'I wanted it that way,' says Moerke. 'In recent years, I have replaced food preparers - who did a fine job for the kitchen at the time, by the way - with chefs. We have chefs and sous chefs, like in a good restaurant.'
The ingredients come primarily from close by, which is another important part of the vision. And on that part, too, Moerke had to show initiative. Local suppliers of meat, fish, vegetables and fruit he needed. 'We serve about a thousand meals a day here. Then that food has to be there all the time. That's why I helped build the Boer & Chef cooperative from day one. By now it is no longer a cooperative, but it is a company that stands and supplies us, but also catering establishments, chains and caterers in the North.'
And that's how Nij Smellinghe manages to offer fresh food and drink every day. Food from the region, food with a story, food of the season. Without artificial E-numbers, with taste. Moerke: 'Food is now an integral part of the hospital's strategy. Patients are happy about it, employees too. Very important in these times of labor shortages.'
Also essential: sustainability. 'In hospitals, it is not abnormal that fifty percent of prepared food is thrown away in the end. We have brought that percentage down drastically. What is left over, we compost ourselves and reuse in the field. Apart from that, we save an immense amount of plastic by
working with self-scooping yogurt, for example'. The nice thing: by minimizing waste, all this delicious, responsible food and drink turns out to be no more expensive than production from the old-fashioned hospital kitchen.
No Guilty Pleasure
Lex Moerke is not one of radical turnarounds in the transition to healthier living. 'Of course, what we offer is healthy because it comes from the region and is little processed. We know the origin and tell about it. But I think you should also have comfort food, such as pastries. Now if we take the sausage roll off the shelf, it's not liked, or a croquette. So then you have to offer the best croquette you can find. We found those in a little factory on Terschelling. The fish supplier takes them with him when he has to go that way anyway.'
That pastry, that's exactly the department of another innovator of hospital food: Sascha Bouwknegt. Anyone who visited the Martini Hospital recently may have seen it, but probably not tasted it: delicious chocolate cake, apple pie, cheesecake and more in the display case. Tastes as good as it looks, but is
a lot better for the body. No Guilty Pleasure is what they call this line of products. And not without reason. 'The big difference is that this pastry contains two-thirds fewer calories and a fraction of the number of carbohydrates. On the other hand, it contains more protein. So not only is it less bad, it's better for you.' Sascha
Bouwknegt and Lex Moerke have similarities. Not only did they study together at the Hotel School in Leeuwarden. They also have the same kind of conviction: nutrition in hospitals must improve, but changes should not be too radical.
Tweaking
'The taste, the feel, the smell, it should all resemble what people are used to,' Sascha Bouwknegt - best known as founder of catering company Smaak van het Noorden - says of it. 'That's the way to entice people to make slightly healthier choices. And I think that belongs in a hospital.'
So does Vitam, which runs the catering business at Martini Hospital. So the company gave Sascha the space. 'For a year and a half it was try, test, throw away a lot and try again.' She did that mostly at bakery Fleddérus in Hooghalen, the address where she also apprenticed as a bread baker. 'The people there are experts and helped me tremendously. Like with figuring out which ingredients I could substitute for which healthy variety.'
Sugar out, sweetener in. Cream out, Greek yogurt in. White flour out, spelt flour in. These are some of the major interventions Sascha tinkers with to create the ideal pastry. 'I'm constantly tweaking to make it even tastier. No, I'm not easily satisfied. Sometimes it's a matter of starting all over again,
because it doesn't work out anyway.'
It's getting results. Hundreds of cakes now fill mouths of visitors in the Groningen hospital. The cakes are highly appreciated and are now made at a bakery in Putten, the (filled) cakes come from another bakery. Sascha Bouwknegt: "I am working on other products, sausage rolls for example. And in the meantime, I'm looking at what other places I can fill a need.'
Those places are undoubtedly there. Because what Lex Moerke and Sascha Bouwknegt have even more in common is that their work attracts attention. Representatives of hospitals throughout the Netherlands stop by to see how they do it in Drachten after all. The healthy offerings at the Martini Hospital will undoubtedly lead to emulation as well. Perhaps even in Friesland, where Moerke has just taken a bite of a piece of cheesecake from No Guilty Pleasure. This is pretty darn good and
would definitely fit our vision. Do you have a card?'