What We Learned About Starting Social Enterprises – and What We Would Do Differently After six years of Grenzeloos, hundreds of conversations with status holders, and more financial reports than we ever wanted to write, we have a list of insights we wish we had known sooner. This is not a success story – we eventually closed our restaurant. …
Our Recipe for Others: Six Ingredients for Future World Improvers Read More »
From closing a restaurant to new opportunities – and how a forced change taught us what was really important After five years of running a restaurant, it became clear that our model was not sustainable. Despite all the efforts, subsidies, and the fact that the founders worked almost every month without a salary, we were still making structural losses. It was …
Why running a restaurant is hard, and combining it with social impact is even harder “Your purchasing costs are 41% of turnover. In the hospitality industry, that should be a maximum of 30%.” It was the end of 2022, our accountant looked at our figures, and suddenly it became clear why we had been in the red for months. Because of all the other …
The Reality of the Hospitality Industry: Balancing Idealism and Purchasing Margins Read More »
“How do you actually know if you are making an impact?” I was asked this question in 2022 during a conversation with a potential financier. My answer was full of stories: Omar becoming more self-confident, Yara realizing her Dutch dreams, Mohammed getting to know Dutch colleagues. (names are fictitious) “But what are your numbers?” she asked further. Silence. We …
From informal collaboration to professional structures – and why that ultimately helps everyone “Can you demonstrate that your social objectives are truly embedded in your organization?” It was 2021, we were in conversation with the Anton Jurgen Fund, and this question got us thinking. We had our mission in the statutes, …
Governance in Social Enterprises: How to Anchor Your Impact Objectives? Read More »
Why it matters whether you reach someone after 6 months or 6 years – and how corona completely changed our target group “I want to work. I want to learn. When can I start?” Omar (names are fictitious) suddenly appeared in our restaurant on a random afternoon in 2022. He had found us on Facebook, lived …
From AZC to Labor Market: Early Intervention with Newcomers Read More »
From waiting for referrals to actively searching for the right people – and why that changed a lot The strength of our first period is that we had an intensive collaboration with Podium24, in which someone was also specifically assigned to our trajectory. That helped enormously in the beginning, because someone actively selected and searched …
The Inflow Puzzle: How Do You Reach Status Holders Effectively? Read More »
Or: How to set up a social enterprise without knowing what you’re doing (and why that sometimes works out well) “So you want to start a restaurant… without any experience in the hospitality industry… with status holders… who also need to learn Dutch… and that also needs to be profitable?” Good question. Maybe we should have thought of that a bit earlier. …
How we started: From Empty Space to Revolving Restaurant Read More »
How three young entrepreneurs thought they could change the world with coffee, toasted sandwiches and a healthy dose of idealism It was 2018 when Peter and Anne-Maaike were faced with a practical problem. They had a beautiful building in the centre of Maastricht available to house a residential community for young adults. But downstairs was a catering space that was still …
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