Verkade
Encyclopedia
Verkade is a Dutch
manufacturing company. The company is headquartered in Zaandam
and was one of the oldest existing family
companies in the Netherlands until its takeover in 1990 by British United Biscuits
, which in turn was taken over in 2006 by Blackstone Group
and PAI Partners
. Originally founded in 1886 by Ericus Verkade
to make mostly bread and rusk
, it expanded to produce cookies, sweets, and, especially, chocolates.
which milled flour
—the original "ruiter" ("knight") was on the company logo until 1994, when it was removed to make way for a newly designed logo, intended to give the company and its products a more contemporary look. The horseman is still found on Verkade rusk, which currently is made by the competitor, the Bolletje factory in Almelo
, using the Verkade recipe. The company acquired the right to bear the "royal" mark in their name in 1950, and employs some 450 people in Zaandam. The last members of the Verkade family, Ericus's great-grandsons Erik and Arnold, left the company in 1992.
Commercial success came about also through marketing, starting in 1906, when the company began issuing picture cards with its products, which could be collected in albums. Co Verkade
, a grandson of Ericus, was instrumental in this strategy, and the albums, most of them written by Jac. P. Thijsse
were especially popular. The albums generated a kind of collection mania among the Dutch population before World War II
: 27 albums were made, a total of 3.2 million copies; another sources lists 28 albums and 362 million cards distributed over 30 years.
opened the Verkade pavilion (which houses corporate art owned by the Verkade family) in the Zaans Museum
. The Zaanstreek (roughly, the area on the river the Zaan
) was a regional center of industry, and women workers were employed at many of the factories in the area, including Honig
, Hille
, and Albert Heijn
.
The history of these factory workers was published in Ruytermeisjes and Verkadevrouwen in 1997; oral historians Ineke Hogema and Ivonne van der Padt describe the women and their situation. Many of them came from the poor areas of Amsterdam
(starting in 1911), and most talked about the pleasant social interactions: "We sang all the time," one of them said, and they were allowed to chat during work. Distinct regional and class differences were noted: girls from Amsterdam (specifically the Jordaan
, a working-class neighborhood) were deemed to be very outspoken, even vulgar, compared to their counterparts from Zaandam; some of the girls were rumored to have undressed a train conductor between Amsterdam and Zaandam. For Verkade, the benefit of hiring female workers was twofold: women were thought to have more delicate hands and be better at packaging brittle materials such as cookies and rusk, and they commanded lower wages than their male counterparts. In a tradition of paternalism, the company apparently felt a kind of responsibility toward the younger girls, who often came from uneducated backgrounds; after hours, they were offered classes in cooking and sewing. The girls usually quit their jobs when they got married (in fact, company policy often dictated that they be fired; unmarried women over 30 had to have made promotion or lose their jobs), and often thought of their old jobs and colleagues with nostalgia.
After World War II
Verkade found itself competing for scarce labor, and it drastically changed its policies, now employing married and older women. It began to run advertisements in the Amsterdam public transportation system: Meisjes komt werken bij Verkade en neem vooral je moeder mee ("Girls, come work at Verkade, and please bring your mother"); in 1961, it opened a daycare facility, one of the first Dutch companies to do so. In the 1960s and 1970s, Verkade also benefited from the influx of migrant workers, who were just coming onto the Dutch labor market, and began hiring and employing the wives of those workers. The end of the Verkademeisjes came in the 1970s and 1980s, when machines started doing the work formerly done by delicate women's fingers.
The Zaans Museum has a section dedicated to the girls. It is sponsored for an amount of E 60,000 by PDZ, one of the country's largest temp agencies
, which was one of the main providers of women to Verkade's work force since the 1960s. Today's Verkademeisjes are a group of singers/actresses founded in 2005 who have revived one notable tradition of the original Verkade girls: singing cheerful songs. Dutch author and songwriter Willem Wilmink
named one of his collections for them, Brief van een Verkademeisje en andere liedjes.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
manufacturing company. The company is headquartered in Zaandam
Zaandam
Zaandam is a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the main city of the municipality of Zaanstad, and received city rights in 1811...
and was one of the oldest existing family
Verkade (family)
Verkade is the name of a Dutch patrician family of entrepreneurs.Originating from Leiden in the early 17th century, the family of French Huguenot descent became known for being manufacturers of chocolate, rusk and cookies....
companies in the Netherlands until its takeover in 1990 by British United Biscuits
United Biscuits
__FORCETOC__United Biscuits is a British multinational food manufacturer, makers of the BN biscuits, McVitie's biscuits, KP Nuts, Hula Hoops, The Real McCoy's crisps, Phileas Fogg snacks, Jacob's Cream Crackers, and Twiglets...
, which in turn was taken over in 2006 by Blackstone Group
Blackstone Group
The Blackstone Group L.P. is an American-based alternative asset management and financial services company that specializes in private equity, real estate, and credit and marketable alternative investment strategies, as well as financial advisory services, such as mergers and acquisitions ,...
and PAI Partners
PAI Partners
PAI partners is a major European private equity house and is the leading private equity investor in the French market. It is one of the oldest and most experienced firms in the sector with its origins dating back to Paribas Affaires Industrielles, the historical principal investment activity of...
. Originally founded in 1886 by Ericus Verkade
Ericus Verkade
Ericus Gerhardus Verkade was the founder in 1886 of the Verkade manufacturing company of the Netherlands.Verkade was born in Vlaardingen. He was named after his father, the notary Ericus Gerhardus Verkade Sr , who died one month before he was born...
to make mostly bread and rusk
Rusk
A rusk is a hard, dry biscuit or a twice-baked bread. It is sometimes used as a baby teething food. In the United Kingdom, the name also refers to a wheat-based food additive.- Germany :The zwieback A rusk is a hard, dry biscuit or a twice-baked bread. It is sometimes used as a baby teething food....
, it expanded to produce cookies, sweets, and, especially, chocolates.
History
The company was first named "De Ruyter" for a mill in ZaandamZaandam
Zaandam is a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the main city of the municipality of Zaanstad, and received city rights in 1811...
which milled flour
Flour
Flour is a powder which is made by grinding cereal grains, other seeds or roots . It is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many cultures, making the availability of adequate supplies of flour a major economic and political issue at various times throughout history...
—the original "ruiter" ("knight") was on the company logo until 1994, when it was removed to make way for a newly designed logo, intended to give the company and its products a more contemporary look. The horseman is still found on Verkade rusk, which currently is made by the competitor, the Bolletje factory in Almelo
Almelo
Almelo is a municipality and a city in the eastern Netherlands. The main population centres in the town are Aadorp, Almelo, Mariaparochie and Bornerbroek....
, using the Verkade recipe. The company acquired the right to bear the "royal" mark in their name in 1950, and employs some 450 people in Zaandam. The last members of the Verkade family, Ericus's great-grandsons Erik and Arnold, left the company in 1992.
Commercial success came about also through marketing, starting in 1906, when the company began issuing picture cards with its products, which could be collected in albums. Co Verkade
Co Verkade
Jacobus Verkade was the grandson of Ericus Verkade, founder of the Verkade manufacturing company. He specialized in sales and marketing and was responsible for, for instance, the packaging of Verkade cookies in metal tins, which quickly became collector's items. Co Verkade began working for the...
, a grandson of Ericus, was instrumental in this strategy, and the albums, most of them written by Jac. P. Thijsse
Jac. P. Thijsse
Jac. P. Thijsse was a Dutch conservationist and botanist. He is sometimes referred to as J.P. Thijssse. He created the "J.P. Thijssse Park" in Amstelveen. He placed on De Grootste Nederlander.- References :...
were especially popular. The albums generated a kind of collection mania among the Dutch population before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
: 27 albums were made, a total of 3.2 million copies; another sources lists 28 albums and 362 million cards distributed over 30 years.
De meisjes van Verkade
In the company's early days, the main part of the workforce consisted of young women who walked in their company uniform to work; these "Verkade girls" (De meisjes van Verkade or Verkadevrouwen, also Ruytermeisjes, for the company's earlier name) are occasionally revived for ceremonial purposes, such as when Queen BeatrixBeatrix of the Netherlands
Beatrix is the Queen regnant of the Kingdom of the Netherlands comprising the Netherlands, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, and Aruba. She is the first daughter of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. She studied law at Leiden University...
opened the Verkade pavilion (which houses corporate art owned by the Verkade family) in the Zaans Museum
Zaans Museum
Zaans Museum is a museum in Zaandam, Netherlands, founded in 1994. It is housed in a contemporary building designed by architects Cor van Hillo and Monique Verschaeren, right across from the historic windmills and houses of the Zaanse Schans, an open-air museum...
. The Zaanstreek (roughly, the area on the river the Zaan
Zaan
The Zaan is a small river in the province of North-Holland in The Netherlands and the name of the district through which it runs. The river was originally a side arm of the IJ bay and travels 10 kilometers through the municipality of Zaanstad north of Amsterdam, from West-Knollendam in the north...
) was a regional center of industry, and women workers were employed at many of the factories in the area, including Honig
Honig
Honig is a surname of German origin. The word means honey in German. People with the name include:*Bonnie Honig , political and legal theorist and feminist*Dick Honig , American football official...
, Hille
Hille
Hille is a community in the Kreis Minden-Lübbecke in the north of East Westphalia, Germany, with approximately 16,000 inhabitants. It was created in 1973 in the framework of the community restructuring of North Rhine-Westphalia through the combining of nine communities of the Minden countryside. ...
, and Albert Heijn
Albert Heijn
Albert Heijn B.V. is a supermarket chain founded in 1887 in Oostzaan, Netherlands. It is named after Albert Heijn, Sr., the founder of the first store in Oostzaan....
.
The history of these factory workers was published in Ruytermeisjes and Verkadevrouwen in 1997; oral historians Ineke Hogema and Ivonne van der Padt describe the women and their situation. Many of them came from the poor areas of Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
(starting in 1911), and most talked about the pleasant social interactions: "We sang all the time," one of them said, and they were allowed to chat during work. Distinct regional and class differences were noted: girls from Amsterdam (specifically the Jordaan
Jordaan
The Jordaan is a district of the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The area is bordered by the Lijnbaansgracht canal to the west, the Prinsengracht to the east, the Brouwersgracht to the north and the Leidsegracht to the south...
, a working-class neighborhood) were deemed to be very outspoken, even vulgar, compared to their counterparts from Zaandam; some of the girls were rumored to have undressed a train conductor between Amsterdam and Zaandam. For Verkade, the benefit of hiring female workers was twofold: women were thought to have more delicate hands and be better at packaging brittle materials such as cookies and rusk, and they commanded lower wages than their male counterparts. In a tradition of paternalism, the company apparently felt a kind of responsibility toward the younger girls, who often came from uneducated backgrounds; after hours, they were offered classes in cooking and sewing. The girls usually quit their jobs when they got married (in fact, company policy often dictated that they be fired; unmarried women over 30 had to have made promotion or lose their jobs), and often thought of their old jobs and colleagues with nostalgia.
After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Verkade found itself competing for scarce labor, and it drastically changed its policies, now employing married and older women. It began to run advertisements in the Amsterdam public transportation system: Meisjes komt werken bij Verkade en neem vooral je moeder mee ("Girls, come work at Verkade, and please bring your mother"); in 1961, it opened a daycare facility, one of the first Dutch companies to do so. In the 1960s and 1970s, Verkade also benefited from the influx of migrant workers, who were just coming onto the Dutch labor market, and began hiring and employing the wives of those workers. The end of the Verkademeisjes came in the 1970s and 1980s, when machines started doing the work formerly done by delicate women's fingers.
The Zaans Museum has a section dedicated to the girls. It is sponsored for an amount of E 60,000 by PDZ, one of the country's largest temp agencies
Temporary work
Temporary work or temporary employment refers to a situation where the employee is expected to leave the employer within a certain period of time. Temporary employees are sometimes called "contractual", "seasonal", "interim", "casual staff", "freelance", or "part-time"; or the word may be shortened...
, which was one of the main providers of women to Verkade's work force since the 1960s. Today's Verkademeisjes are a group of singers/actresses founded in 2005 who have revived one notable tradition of the original Verkade girls: singing cheerful songs. Dutch author and songwriter Willem Wilmink
Willem Wilmink
Willem Wilmink was a Dutch poet and writer. He was best known for his the large number of songs he wrote for popular children programs....
named one of his collections for them, Brief van een Verkademeisje en andere liedjes.