It was a great loss for Schaijk when restaurant Nieuw Schaijk went up in flames in May. It turned the life of co-owner Johan Tielemans completely upside down. He was determined from the day after the fire: “We’re starting over again, I’m convinced of that,” he said then. Now, seven months later, the plans for a new restaurant are almost ready.
Johan is sitting at a table in his parents’ house. Together with them he is the owner of Nieuw Schaijk. The table is full of building plans and sketches from the architect. He talks enthusiastically about better routings through the restaurant, the more intimate places and how he thinks about whether or not a passage should be moved up a meter. “The restaurant is completely up to date again,” says Johan. “It really means starting over again and making it the way we want it.”
“The most unique thing is the patio,” continues the catering man. An outdoor space as the center of the building. “With 13 tons of glass on it. It’s like the Amsterdam ArenA that you can open. So that people really feel that this is an outdoor space.”
“The past seven months have been trial and error.”
On the night of May 14 to 15, things went wrong. A large fire destroyed the entire restaurant on Rijksweg. “I closed that evening myself,” says Johan. “Nobody is to blame for the fire. That’s a nice feeling. But that night is just awful.” There were already advanced plans to renovate the old building. “Everything changed in one night.”
And so Johan is suddenly no longer a catering entrepreneur, but is mainly busy with the new construction plans. “The past seven months have been trial and error. You’ve always had a great full-time job. It changes from one day to the next,” says Johan. “You go from catering operator to project developer.”
“I look forward to the day when I can be a hospitality entrepreneur again”
“You don’t know where to start at first,” he continues. Rebuilding Nieuw Schaijk has been the plan after the fire from the very first moment. “The first advice was to find an architect as soon as possible. It’s been a lot of talking lately. With suppliers, construction companies, architects and kitchen suppliers.”
Soon what is left of the old Nieuw Schaijk will be demolished. The new restaurant should be ready at the end of 2023 or the first quarter of 2024. “I look forward to the day when I can be a hospitality entrepreneur again,” says Johan. “Then you feel that, no matter how unstructured such a life may seem, you get a lot of structure back.”
But first Johan goes to New Zealand with his wife and three children for two months. “We have that opportunity now.”
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