There is a new grocery concept that is creating a furor in the Netherlands. In traditional, conservative Holland. In fact, Thierry Baudet and his team have launched an initiative called "Honest Eating." What it is? Very simple: Honest Food ensures that food is brought straight from the farmer's land to the consumer. And it works.
The Other Newspaper wrote an extensive article about this initiative.
The concept stems from a conversation FVD Lower House member Freek Jansen and Upper House member Joris van den Oetelaar had in 2022. They saw that farmers are increasingly in the doldrums while more and more food in supermarkets is highly processed. They got the idea to start a food company themselves; a company that respects the role of farmers and ensures that people get delicious, fresh produce. Because the two gentlemen are not only politicians, but also foodies.
They presented it to Baudet. The latter loved it. They sat down together. Quality butcher and farmer Patrick van Elteren was approached. He was only too happy to cooperate. The result is Eerlijk Eten: a project in which 5,000 people are now members. 1,200 people receive a weekly box with 24 delicious, high-quality products so, hop, fresh from the land. (This is the concept for families consisting of two people: 24 products weekly)
That quality is abundantly clear, Baudet said. "If you compare our minced meat to supermarket minced meat, when supermarket minced meat is fried you first see a layer of water in the pan. That is added by machine. The same goes for chicken. With Patrick's meat you don't see that and you taste that. "With these products, he continues, nothing is added. "Everything is artisanal and healthy."
Not only does the quality differentiate the boxes of Fair Food from the food in the supermarket, the effect is also significant for farmers themselves. After all, the middleman is taken out of the equation. This means that deals with Honest Food earn farmers between 15% and 20% more.
Honest Food wants to grow to 10,000 customers. Everything is self-financed at Honest Food, Baudet says, so they are accountable to no one except the farmers and the customers. In this way, they want to ensure that quality always remains -and that farmers can make a good living from it so that they can run a healthy farm despite the attacks of politics.