Anneke van Hootegem
Innovator
Grote Verleiding
Netherlands
Economic
Farming
Remote rural areas
The innovation journey
Alex van Hootegem was a farmer and changed into a biological farmer with a wide variety of crops, since 1983 in Kruiningen, Zeeland. In 2005, his wife Anneke van Hootegem quit her job and started the webshop Grote Verleiding to sell biological food to citizens, because of her burgundy way of eating.
Nowadays she is collaborating with almost 20 food producers in the South West part of the Netherlands, providing vegetables, fruit, dairy, meat, seaweed, samphire, chocolate, juices and jams.
In 2020, together with journalist Elian van ’t Westeinde, she made a restart with Slow Food Zeeland. Slow Food is a worldwide organisation to create a good, sustainable and honest food system.
Slow Food Zeeland wants to connect citizens with the diverse, local food the province has to offer from the sea and land. The diversity in products is something we should cherish and strengthen to enlarge biodiversity. Slow Food Zeeland wants to bridge local farmers with cooks, fishers, scientists, entrepreneurs and consumers.
Slow Food Zeeland offers a platform and organising activities.
The innovation impact
The food webshop with home delivery was in 2005 a logistical innovation. Recently, she used the platform Slow Food to enlarge this approach for a larger region and more stakeholders involved.