With currants or without? It’s that time of year again when we bake and eat oliebollen en masse. Especially in Brabant, because there are no fewer than eighty oliebol baking companies with stalls selling oliebollen. Our province is therefore in second place when it comes to the most oliebol entrepreneurs in the Netherlands. This is evident from figures from the Chamber of Commerce (KvK).
In recent years, the number of oliebol baking companies throughout the country has increased by more than 16 percent. Most oliebollen entrepreneurs come from Gelderland. There are about 105 companies that sell oliebollen with stalls on streets and squares. After Gelderland, the most oliebollen companies are registered in North Brabant this winter, 80 in total. Four years ago there were only 67.
Chairman Atze Lubach-Koers of the National Association of Fairground Business Owners (BOVAK), which represents the majority of oliebollen entrepreneurs, thinks this is partly due to the corona crisis. “As a fairground industry, we were at a standstill at the time, but municipalities gave us the opportunity to operate oliebollen stalls. Counter sales were allowed,” he explains.
Many more bakers
The Chamber of Commerce has collected the data on the basis of so-called SBI codes, but the Chamber of Commerce does note that the actual number of oliebollen companies may be higher. According to Lubach-Koers, the figures indeed give a somewhat distorted picture, because many entrepreneurs are registered as operators of fairground attractions and not as oliebol baking companies. “One year entrepreneurs can run an oliebollen stall, but the next year they can just as easily run an attraction.”
The number of oliebol baking companies in North Brabant as of 2013: