It has been on the menu of Pilkington’s restaurant in the heart of Den Bosch for thirty years: the apple crumble. But only recently has things started to take off. Now you can enjoy the ‘crazy crumble’, a variation on the traditional apple crumble, but with custard sauce, under the smoke of St. John’s Cathedral. The business hired a number of influencers to promote the new delicacy and that clearly paid off.
It will still be a while until carnival, but there is still a polonaise in the center of Den Bosch. All those sweet tooths are waiting in front of the takeaway window of Pilkington’s restaurant. There they serve an apple crumble with custard sauce. Eindhoven influencer Sophie Ousri filmed herself enjoying the ‘crazy crumble’ and shared it with more than 170,000 followers on her TikTok channel. Since then it has been full steam ahead.
“We have been influenced,” two girls say, laughing, while standing in line. “We came from the office especially to get it. We work with TikTok all day long, so you can’t ignore it.” Another group of friends also joins the queue: “We often go to these kinds of things that go viral,” they say. “We were once in a shop in Amsterdam, but then we stood in line for an hour for the fitting room.”
“It’s a bizarre story,” says owner Bart Derks. “I never expected it to be this big.” In addition to the three permanent employees, there are now two additional people at the takeaway window to serve the crumble.
“Three teenage girls blush when they see the prize.”
The crazy crumble is in great demand. So much that a takeaway window has to be used. “The open window allows you to keep the price relatively low,” says Bart. Not everyone agrees with that. A bowl of crazy crumble costs 6.50 euros. Three teenage girls standing in line blush when they see the prize.
The plan to promote the new delicacy through influencers did not come from the owner himself. His wife Angelique is doing the promotion and invited a number of them. “For example, when Zin In Den Bosch and Bossche Buik visited, you noticed that things were starting to get going,” says Bart. “But after Sophie Ousri’s video, things really went sky high.” He didn’t know her himself, ‘but more than 100,000 people do’.
Waiting for privacy settings…
The idea for the crazy crumble did not come out of the blue. Bart and Angelique go on an inspiration tour in London every year. There are now four branches of the Humble Crumble business there, where they sell all kinds of variations on apple crumble. Bart saw the success with his own eyes and thought ‘we have been selling apple crumble for more than thirty years, we can do that too.’
Through a shared acquaintance they came into contact with influencer Sophie Ousri. She turned out to be a big fan of the English humble crumble and was happy to come along. “She immediately really liked it,” says Bart. And a lot of her followers thought so too: the result is a long queue in front of the store.
But what will be the next step after this success? “Maybe we will sell it with vanilla ice cream this summer,” Bart thinks out loud. “Or, as is often happening in London now, with marshmallows or rose petals. There are plenty of variations, you can go in any direction.”