Shout-out from a Belgian F&B start-up for more cooperation between politics and economy on local levels

Having lived and travelled around the world during the last 25 years, I dare to state that I believe in the goodness of all peoples and therefore I am a proud world citizen. Besides that, I am also extremely proud of my origins as a Belgian citizen. That being said, I would definitely not describe myself as being a chauvinist or nationalist. I think it’s fair to say that one will not encounter too many world travellers which are at the same time extreme nationalists. Open-mindedness is one of the main characteristics of my peers, i.e. the “world citizens”, expats, world travellers and other adventurers who always have been eager to really explore the world in a sustainable way.

Although my country of birth is rather small, Belgians have a rich history in inventing and further finetuning e.g. the most exquisite food & beverage products, even when the origin of this product is not necessarily lying in Belgium. The average American would have big difficulties in pointing out where Belgium is situated on a world map, hell yeah, even some famous politicians probably still think that Belgium is a small village or at max a city somewhere in France, Germany or the Netherlands. Most of them would however know that waffles, beer, chocolate and many other food & beverage products have a strong connection to Belgium.

Through history, the small size of our country resulted in the fact that one needs to be trade and export-oriented in order to become successful. Our history of export-orientation has managed to breed a culture of great entrepreneurship in Belgium during the last centuries. The fact that all over the world above mentioned food & beverage products have a connotation to Belgium means that Belgians are amongst the greatest salesmen and marketeers in the world.

Nowadays, if Belgium were a company competing in a big corporate world, we would be bankrupt within three days. Most of our KPI’s would be dark red and we would have big difficulties in trying to find the funding which enables us to become profitable, simultaneously we would need great and agile leadership in order to turnaround our precarious economical situation. Whilst in this day and age it is apparently not so difficult for a country to find extra funding, the crucial great political leadership seems to be a much bigger and much more difficult attribute to obtain.

Whilst living abroad from approx. 2000 to 2016, I also followed the news learning that Belgium had difficulties in forming federal governments and read in the newspapers that in spite of the fact that creating governmental efficiency always seemed to be on top of any political agenda, throughout the years it seemed like no real progress in that matter was being made. Being a Belgian, I was often asked especially in foreign governmental circles during those years what my opinion about the difficult political situation in Belgium was. Further then a couple of cheap oneliners, statements and excuses I learned from the Belgian newspapers e.g. “because the French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemish have different cultural backgrounds”, “because Belgium is flooded with mass-immigration”, … I didn’t come. To be honest, least of my problems as a person who has a less-than-average interest in politics and was living in a thriving economical environment abroad.

But then - after a two-year world trip with my wife and my two small toddlers - I decided to return to Belgium. Not only to visit our family here, but also to come back and live and work in Belgium. As a keen world observer with an open mind, I had noticed that although Belgians are the 8th biggest coffee drinkers in the world, there seemed to be no national coffeeshop-chain in Belgium. All countries I have lived/worked in or visited had at least one national coffeeshop-chain. From the beginning I have seen myself as a visionary being able to spot this trend.

A lot of research, preparation and studying of the fascinating coffee world resulted in the founding of our start-up IzyCoffee middle of 2018. “Izy” pronounces like easy: our homebase is a small but very lively city in West-Flanders called Izegem but the “izy” also refers to the fact that we want to commoditise quality coffee and provide all Belgians with our delicious products in an “easy” and affordable manner. As a broad-minded thinker and a start-up entrepreneur who still allows a certain degree of naivety and dreaming in our strategical business plans, I am convinced that we can become as big as Starbucks and Luckin Coffee or at least Costa Coffee and Caffè Nero. I guess in my subconsciousness I must have inherited from my ancestors that extremely fascinating drive to trade, sell and market to the maximum and by doing so to simultaneously also conquer the world. Conquering the world in business terminology that is. As mentioned earlier, as a world citizen seeing the goodness of all peoples, I have no believe and/or ambition in any military/geo-political conquering of the world.

The ability to be able to dream big and aim high gives all employees at IzyCoffee the motivation and drive to become extremely successful. And we seem to be starting to collect first successes. After a mere one and a half year of operation, we now have 3 coffeeshops in neighbouring cities in West-Flanders. Our plan is to continue to expand our business in spite of the current situation and IzyCoffee should have 10 coffeeshops by the end of 2020. After this, we should grow at a rate of one new shop per month, enabling us to operate approximately 70 coffeeshops in Belgium and surrounding countries by the end of 2025.

Enter the worst crisis the world has ever encountered, COVID-19. We all are aware of the social damage this extremely vicious virus has already caused on a worldwide level. Since one famous world politician recently showed the powerpoint chart, yes I have to admit, Belgium is even over-proportionally suffering. Belgium namely has the highest COVID-19 related death rate per capita in the whole world, a small excuse being the random measures of counting between the different countries definitely also playing a role. I guess on 13th March, at IzyCoffee, we must have already felt this bad tendency, since we decided to immediately close all our shops, even though we were convinced that we were still allowed to continue to trade with 100% take-away. All other shops like butchers, bakers, fishmongers and sandwich-bars just remained open for take-away. As good citizens, we totally put aside our economical interests and always announced that our main concern from that point was the good health of all West-Flemish, Belgian and world citizens. Yes, we’re all in deep healthily, social and economical misery, but hey, just like Belgium we all will have dark-red KPI’s. And being a broad-minded, world-oriented positivist, I am convinced the world, together with most countries and most of us will recover from this excruciating state of economical depression.

But one thing I’ve learned in my nearly 20 years working in the corporate world, we will all have to cooperate intensively to solve the problem and professionally manage the turn-around. Much credit to the Belgian scientists and virologists. I am 100% convinced that together with the many healthcare workers, they are the true heroes of 2020. Coincidentally, I yesterday read that one Belgian virologist said that originally it was their intention to completely lockdown the country for one full year. I must admit, although I am an eager entrepreneur who has an enormous drive to boost his company success at a very fast pace, I would have preferred this measure. I will also tell you why: In crisis management, a logically structured action plan and a clear communication strategy will be the only way towards the solution of the problem. Doesn’t matter whether we are speaking about a small crisis (for parents a crying child might be a good example) or a big crisis. Now I will also tell you the problem: Belgium has with both the political complexity it has allowed itself to build during the last decades and the political non-willingness to solve this complexity and strive for more efficiency, no ability whatsoever to implement a logically structured action plan and a clear communication strategy. Knowing that, in order to nevertheless be able to professionally solve the problem and simultaneously manage the turn-around, you need to go for a very simple solution. Eventhough the problem is highly complex. Meaning that as a country you have to decide to either completely stay open, like Sweden, or to completely close. In my opinion, Belgium should have completely closed. In all other circumstances, you will create a chaos which becomes unmanageable. And that we are creating a tremendously chaotic situation in Belgium, this is becoming extremely clear.

At IzyCoffee, we unfortunately had to learn this the hard way during the last week. As earlier mentioned, since the beginning of the crisis, the Belgian government have decided that some shops are allowed to open, others will have to close. On a macro-level, the criteria seem to be very clear. As always, as soon as you will look at things on a more detailed level, the criteria are not only not clear at all, it seems that no-one really took care of even preparing them.

As a coffeeshop chain with three branches in different cities, all located within 20 km of each other in the same province, we need to deal with 3 different city administrations to guarantee that we comply to the federally decided COVID-19 measures at any moment. Seems logical, might not be different from anywhere else in the world. Measures are federally decided, on a province-basis delegated and implemented on a city-level. On purpose I left out now the communities (Flanders, Walloon area, ...), which in normal times could be an extreme additional driver of further complexity, however I give credit to how the communities and federal governments have at least shown to the outside world that they were intensively and harmoniously cooperating in COVID-19 times.

Coming back to the chaos which is being created. As a result from not so clear measure-taking and communication we are now allowed to only re-open in one city, but the two other cities don’t allow us to re-open. Also Rene Magritte was Belgian. Our economical world becomes more surreal, which I am sure he would have loved. Local politicians who are probably steered by their continuous need to gain the votes of their local citizens will start to direct the show. Arbitrariness will become the standard. Leading to, right, “Chaos AD, for you and for me”.

We are a completely non-alcoholic coffeeshop-chain, with opening hours from 8am to 6pm. In some cities we are nevertheless considered as a pub or a party venue. Because of that, we are not allowed to re-open. How can we still be considered as a pub or a party venue? The only non-alcoholic pub or party venue I might have discovered on my world trips must have definitely been in the Middle East. But in Belgium, come on guys? Did I not explain enough that we are completely non-alcoholic and only open during the day? I think so, nevertheless, argumentation rejected.

We operate a food & beverage business model which is to a big extent based on take-away products. Being agile, we are easily able to switch to 100% take-away. In pre-COVID 19 times, we generated 50% of our turn-over via the sale of take-away products. Although take-away has been allowed from the beginning of the partial lockdown in Belgium, we are not allowed to re-open. Did I not explain enough that we are specialised in take-away? I think so, nevertheless, argumentation rejected.

Our core product is quality coffee. Apart from that, like most coffeeshops in the world, we of course also sell wraps, sandwiches, salads, cakes etc. My neighbour is a sandwich bar, his core products are sandwiches and salads, apart from that, he also sells coffee. He is allowed to re-open, we are not. Did I not explain enough that we all have the same certifications to be able to sell meals? I think so, nevertheless, argumentation rejected.

The mayor in one city decided that based on the facts & figures we delivered, we are allowed to re-open. The mayor in the city 10 km further is when being confronted with this, stubbornly sticking to his own interpretation of not-clearly defined rules. Randomness all over. Leading to extreme surrealism. It seems like Magritte and even Kafka are ruling our small city-life. Did I not explain enough that we need an honest, clear and uniform decision? I think so, nevertheless, argumentation rejected.

I have clearly stated to mayors that they will have severe problems clearly communicating to their citizens they will be allowed to buy a sandwich with a coffee in one shop, but not a coffee with a sandwich in the neighbouring other shop. Corona-kafka situations in rural West-Flanders. Did I not warn that the press will jump on similar stories and major shit-storms will be created on social media because of this? Was the absurdity of the matter not clearly indicating this would happen? I think so, nevertheless, argumentation rejected

And unfortunately I can go on and on.

I have a major respect for the difficult situation all mayors in Belgium are having to deal with. It is not my intention to finger-point. I understand that we are being confronted with the biggest crisis the world ever had to deal with. However, now is the time to benchmark our ability to solve problems and professionally manage turn-arounds. Due to my extensive worldwide network, I am in a very good position to judge whether in comparison to our neighbouring countries Belgium is doing a good job. From what I hear from friends and former colleagues, we are not. The Netherlands, Germany, UK, yes even France are doing much better. What is it that they have which is apparently keeping us from being able to communicate clearly and implement correctly? I don’t know, neither am I a politician, nor do I have any political ambitions. But the main stakeholders of the politicians are the citizens they represent. And those main stakeholders will continue and increasingly ask for explanations. If I were a politician, I would start to take decisions with common sense and add a lot of empathy in my communications to my stakeholders. As a previous executive leader in a big multinational with >100.000 employees, but also as a small start-up entrepreneur, I have learned that common sense and empathy already solve half of the problems. And what’s even better, they incredibly increase efficiency. In our case, they would have even avoided that I have to get up on a Saturday morning dedicating my time to writing this “originally-meant-to-be-short-collection-of-thoughts”.

In the higher levels of the corporate world, one also learns to think very strategically. Which brings me to the exact reason why I am addressing my thoughts to the world via LinkedIn/Facebook. I’m not a specialist, but since we’re being advised that a second/third/… lockdown might be looming around the corner, as an entrepreneur I will be preparing myself very well. As a matter of fact, I can already tell you that at this very moment, we are already fully prepared. Consequently, during that next lockdown, I will only act upon clear action plans and honest measures which I am being confronted with. The health of all Belgian citizens will once again be also my highest priority. But I am not once again closing all my shops, not being allowed to get a subsidy for that supporting action. Meaning that when one shop will be allowed to open for take-away during that lockdown, I will also open for take-away. I don’t care whether the other shop will be a baker, a butcher, a fish monger or a sandwich bar. Coffee is as much of a commodity as is bread, fish, meat or sandwiches. If there will be no complete lockdown in Belgium, IzyCoffee will be open for take-away. I will not have week-long discussions with local decision-makers about it. As local businesses we are not only main stakeholders of the local administrations, but we are also the drivers of the their local economies. Should be reason enough to enable a smooth cooperation between all of us. We are ready to speak, contribute and fully cooperate!

I am fully aware that the micro-level of the coffeeshop world I am moving in is not an exact representation of the big real world outside of my coffeeshop. But undoubtedly, now and definitely in the very near future, when additional businesses will be allowed in Belgium to re-open again, more and more cases as ours will appear. In order to tackle this abruptly, we will need great political leadership on all levels. Constructive cooperation between politicians and the economical world is needed. That multinationals and big corporates will be the first ones which will be helped is not more than logical. My shout-out to the politicians however is to warn that SME’s and start-ups cannot be forgotten. They in many cases live from cooperations with politicians on local levels. Enable local politicians to listen to solid argumentation from small progressive entrepreneurs. Give local politicians the toolbox so it is guaranteed they can take their clear decisions on a local level. Make local politicians vow that they will use empathy in their communication to all their economical and civilian stakeholders. Only when we manage this, we will be able to rebound the Belgian economy and ensure that Belgium will regain after this heavy crisis its position as one of Europe’s smaller economic powerhouses! Something our ancestors have given us on a plate. An enormously valuable treasure we will one day be able to bestow upon our (grand-)children.