Bakers who sell the popular pink cream croissant under the name crompouce are being pursued by lawyers from a colleague from Utrecht. Ulrika Menig, owner of Bammetje Bakery, says she is the inventor of the delicacy and does not accept imitations at other bakeries. But the pastry is not that new, Drenthe bakers respond.
Many say they came up with the crompouce in 2020 during the corona lockdown. When customers in her Utrecht bakery kept asking about it, she decided to register the brand name and the product. The product and brand name of the crompouce may now no longer be used without permission, she warns.
According to Menig, ‘action will most certainly be taken’ against infringement. Menig’s lawyers have already written to dozens of parties, including several chains and two supermarkets. From now on, artisan bakers may only sell the product under license, others are ordered to stop selling.
Over the past month, the crompouce has become a craze, mainly thanks to massive attention on social media. Bakers sold a lot of crompouces, including the Nijstad pastry shop in Meppel. But what Menig created in 2020 is not really unique, says owner Henriëtte Teunissen. “Only the name given to it is new.”
When Teunissen recently came up with something with Miffy on it in her baked goods, she immediately received a reprimand from Dick Bruna, Miffy’s spiritual father. “And if she (Menig, ed.) can prove that it is hers and really wants to do something about it, you run the risk of having to pay,” says Teunissen.
Arjan Kroesen of Puur Brood, who sells his baked goods at the market in Emmen, among other places, acknowledges, just like Teunissen, that the name crompouce is rightly claimed. He therefore sells the cream croissant under a different title: the Kroespouce, named after himself. “Using the name crompouce is a danger,” he says.
You can simply use the raw materials in the crompouce, says Kroesen. Moreover, according to him, the product has been sold for twenty years. Kroesen does not only sell the delicacy in pink. He also has variants with chocolate. Or there are yellow baked goods in the display case. “They are made with banana,” he says. “If a hype ever arises, we can respond quickly.”
Colleague Teunissen from Meppel does not think that her bakery will suffer much disadvantage if the name crompouce can no longer be read in her store. “It was just a hype,” she says. “But luckily there are a lot of other tasty products.”