About Spirello™

The story of Spirello™ is inextricably linked to founder, owner and bon vivant Robert Luttjehuizen. Hold on tight because it’s a rollercoaster of a story!

Raised in the beautiful country of Brabant, Robert discovered the culinary delights of life at an early age. That probably explains his Rubens-like appearance. That’s a fancy way of saying that his burgundian lifestyle and his physique may be somewhat connected 😉

Where his peers earned a penny during high school as a newspaper delivery boy or a stock boy at the local supermarket, Robert sought refuge in the hospitality industry. The usual jobs as dishwasher and kitchen help passed in review. Starting at the bottom, that’s how it should be! And…you learn a lot there!

 

While his peers earned a buck during high school as a newspaper deliverer or stock boy at the local supermarket, Robert sought refuge in the hospitality industry. The usual jobs as dishwasher and kitchen help passed in review. Starting at the bottom, that’s how it should be! And what a lot to learn!

Anyway, after high school it was time to choose an advanced education. And in Robert’s family it was not customary to make a career in the hospitality industry, let alone do something with hospitality. No, the idea was to do “something expensive. Corporate Governance Management Consultancy or something like that.

 

So, hup, Robert off to Erasmus University Rotterdam to start studying Business Administration. To be fair, this was also a great time. Wandering around the market as a poor student at the end of the day to score the last bits of meat, fish and vegetables as cheaply as possible! ‘Here student take it’, and now get lost! Nice people those market men and women! And then in the evening he and his roommates would dine like kings in the student dorm!

Anyway, he had started studying business administration, so he finished it. Studying hard during the week and doing odd jobs in the restaurant business on the weekends with his old friends from Brabant! At one point they even trusted him to work in the kitchen as a cook! It couldn’t get any crazier! But it did work!

And then ……., graduated! Oh dear, what now?

Robert himself speaking:
“So once I graduated, I had to start doing ‘expensive’ things. That’s what I thought we were going to do. Nice suit, lease car under your ass and, yes …..what actually? What were you really doing? Giving advice, market research? At least it wasn’t something tangible. Look, if you cook a steak and the guest doesn’t like it, he won’t eat it. If you do that too often, he just won’t come back. Nice overview, right? Within the hospitality industry you know exactly where you stand. And I missed that feeling a lot.”

Even during his first “real” jobs in the corporate world, Robert stayed true to his F&B roots. He’d bought an old chafing dish and converted it into a BBQ low&slow FoodTruck in the shed at his in-laws’ house. And there it went! On the weekends and vacations he worked at festivals and company parties. In the meantime he has gained a few pounds and now he has grown a beard. Such a big guy with beard, leather BBQ apron and then selling pulled pork, brisket and ribs, the guests liked that! Fantastic thing to do. During lunch, and dinner times it was super busy but during the times in between it was slow. There had to be extra business! So something had to be done there! The question was: What in-between snack could you offer that would be in demand throughout the day and thus bring in extra business?

Hmmm? French fries? No, everyone already does that and it’s not special enough. But something with potato fits well with the FoodTruck. That twisted potato on a stick, is that something? Could be…

To be clear, a twisted potato wokkel on a stick is originally a street food snack originating in South Korea. There, street vendors twist and sell the product on the roadside.

So, Robert orders a hand cutter on Alibaba and starts turning raw potatoes into Spirellos on the spot and to order in his FoodTruck.

Just a side note. The name “Spirello” was coined by Robert himself. After all, the ‘potato wokkle-on-a-stick’ did not yet have its own brand name. And the name ‘Spirello’ seemed like a good idea to him! Just had to register the name anyway 😉

From day 1 that Robert started selling Spirello from his FoodTruck it was crazy! Unbelievable how much demand there was for the product. Kids, adults, grandpas, grandmas, the whole family would love one of those hot, fried and spiced potato snacks on a stick!

But, something struck Robert. Better yet, four things struck him.

First, it was actually not doable to process whole potatoes into Spirellos on location. Poking and slicing the potato, fanning (distributing) the sliced potato over the stick and then frying it simply takes way too long. The queue got longer and longer. So much so that people walked out of the line. Not to mention the guests who didn’t join the queue and walked on. There goes your (extra) sales!

Then again, frying a raw potato in one go is actually not-done. A potato consists largely of water and if you cut it open and fry several at a time, not only will your frying oil fizzle but the temperature will also drop like crazy. The result: a product that slowly fills up with oil and cooks very slowly. Maw, this is not the quality you want. Any cook will explain to you that a potato product must be heated at least twice to ensure quality. In the early days, Robert literally turned over trash cans at festivals and saw Spirellos only half-eaten and/or thrown away because they weren’t cooked. See, this is what we call market research!

Third, Robert noticed something else. It just so happens that each Spirello is made from one potato. And, not all potatoes are the same. Just like people, you have thick & thin and long & short ones. And here’s the thing, when a family with kids orders Spirellos, as a parent you don’t want son boy to get a bigger Spirello than his sister. A kids’ quarrel is lurking. There goes your fun day out with the kids! By the way, the same goes for adults: when you order the same thing you all want to get the same thing. Not some more than others. Uniformity is a difficult word! The only way to get uniformity is if you select your potatoes by diameter and length in advance. But that’s quite a hassle!

And then point four. Not all potato varieties are suitable for making Spirellos. It is now going too far to explain this in detail (Robert will be happy to do so if you contact him!) but what it boils down to is that the potato must have the right balance between the amount of water on the one hand and the percentage of solids in a potato on the other. In addition, the glucose content in the potato also plays a role. So you can’t just use any potato variety to make nice Spirellos out of them.

So the above 4 points were food for thought for Robert. The solution was much simpler than thought dependent. You want a product that is already prepared. You want the Spirello to be baked on location. The product must be uniform and already pre-baked (and therefore cooked).

So, Robert off to the wholesaler. And just searching and searching. What turns out? What he wants doesn’t exist. You can’t buy semi-finished Spirello. That is strange! But that also offers possibilities…

Then I have to pre-produce it myself.

Robert himself speaking:

“Once I knew that the Spirello could not be purchased as a semi-finished product, I looked sweetly at my partner and then confiscated our garage. By that I mean, I threw everything out to make room. Then I put up a stainless steel workbench, a used fryer and a shock freezer. Then I locked the garage door, put on AC/DC Thunderstruck and started making Spirellos. At the end of my first day of production, I went to our local (indoor) playground with a box of pre-cut, pre-fried and frozen Spirellos, asking if they would buy the box. ‘Hey, that looks funny,’ was the owner’s response. ‘Is good, just leave the box, we’ll see,’ I can still hear him say. The next morning TRRRRRRING, TRRRRRRRRING, the phone! Whether I could come and drop off a few more boxes! And then it rang a bell with me!”.

Now there’s something you should know about Robert. He is not completely normal. As soon as he sees an opportunity and believes in it, he goes all-in. And Spirello came at exactly the right time. Robert wanted to get out of the corporate world. F&B has always attracted him and Spirello was the perfect opportunity to take his entrepreneurial aspirations to the next level. The next challenge was clear: How to build a successful business around the Spirello product?

And now it is important to let Robert speak a little more:

“For years I wondered why I studied Business Administration? What’s the point of that anyway? But now I have to thank my parents for sending me to college anyway. Building a business is a process of 2 steps forward, 1 step backward and then some (theoretical) knowledge comes in handy. So, mom and dad, thanks!”

OK, so we know the product is resonating with the public. Now what? First, look for bigger customers. There is nothing wrong with a customer who orders a few individual boxes, but a customer who buys a whole pallet is nice. Who are they? ……. Amusement parks! Robert clearly remembers his first conversation with an amusement park:

“There I went, with a test box of Spirello under my arm to a medium-sized amusement park in the Netherlands. The conversation lasted exactly 28 minutes! Outcome: an order of 2 pallets. Hallelujah! My first reaction was frenzied. Wow! Wow! And wow again! But once in my car, it really dawned on me. How was I going to produce this? And what if the customer ordered another 2 pallets after that? How? What? Where? When? Who? My head was spinning! But you know what? I’m just going to work really hard and trust my own abilities! As Pipi Longstocking put it, ‘I’ve never done it before, so I think I can do it!’ And so it happened.”

So much for romance. It was time for Robert to put into practice what he had learned during his studies. First he had to work out a business model. Preferably as simple as possible. His reasoning was as follows: if you can run cost-neutrally with the current purchase and very limited production resources, then everything you produce and sell after that will be profit! What does this require? More big customers and an automated production process. Good plan. So that’s what he was going to do.

The garage was traded in for a construction shed. The shed was exchanged for a warehouse. The shed was traded in for a self-built production facility. Manual labor became automated. Conveyor belts, conveyor belts, professional fryers were purchased. Production volume and quality went up.

At the same time, the front end was also expanding. Amusement parks discovered Spirello and embraced the product immediately! Many parks were looking for a F&B item that fell into the category “Impulse Purchase”. These are products of which the guest thinks as soon as he sees it: “Hey, that looks nice and tasty, I want that one!”. A prerequisite is that the profit margin must be good, the product must be easy to prepare and the supplier must offer security of supply. Et voilà, ….. there is Spirello! How many pallets did you want to order? Sales and production went quickly but fortunately simultaneously! The ship had sailed!

But where does Spirello™ stand now? Robert speaking:

“I still regularly marvel at how the world looks at Spirello. I mean, we’ve blazed a great trail so far, and of course I’m well aware that many see Spirello as an established name in the industry. But when I’m on customer visits and sit at the table with the F&B director alongside other suppliers like Coca-Cola, Unilever and McCain (the big corporates) I think to myself, they should know how we started. And not even that long ago. Beautiful right! But, looking back is standing still and these Calimero’s want to move forward! But in our own way!

At the moment we supply Spirellos in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, UK, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, France and then I am probably forgetting an EU country. Every year we produce and sell several hundred thousand Spirellos. And yes, for the accountants among us, there are already many more than a million. Customers often start with one outlet (Spirello FoodCottage) and over time scale up to two or even three outlets. It’s really a lot of fun to go through this journey with a client. And do you know what our best selling point to potential customers is? You can’t do Spirello either! 😉

Oh yes, another fun news! Since 2023 we are also active in the USA! The mecca of amusement parks! Surely it’s cool (and exciting) to send a freezer container full of Spirellos across the big pond!

Where will this adventure end? No idea, but at least we will have a damn good time together!

Just call or email me if you want to know anything!”

With friendly regards

Robert Luttjehuizen