It took 16 months for Belgium to form the last government due to the divisions between the Flemish side, the Belgian side and the capital Brussels, but it took a few hours to compact the whole country around a biscuit. Sunday Jan Boone, CEO of Lotus Bakeries, he had told to the Belgian magazine The time that next year the historic Speculoos biscuit – caramelized and with a cinnamon aroma, served in single-portion packs with coffee in all the bars in the country – will change its name to Biscoff, from the union of biscuit and coffee.
Join our FB group “Save our speculoos!” “! #Jesuisspeculoos pic.twitter.com/RD8HHflezR
– Olivier Defranne (@OlivierDefranne) November 3, 2020
Internationally it is already known by this name, while Speculoos remains on the packaging in Belgium, France and the Netherlands: the idea is to unify the name under a single brand to make it stronger and launch it globally. Furthermore, the word speculoos indicates the biscuit in a generic way and a proper name is instead necessary to protect the brand in view of its international expansion.
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The news was accepted from protests and indignation from every area of the country, which have poured into social networks with invitations to boycott and with the hashtags #biscoff and #jesuisspeculoos that have become trending on Twitter. There are those who wrote that “we must once again bow to the rest of the world. It hurts the heart ”, some have complained that“ it is a pity that that beautiful name with a long history disappears for international profit. Really, money and profit ruin our fondest memories “and again those who threatened that” are shameful. But people will not use this name and in Belgium the sales of Lotus Speculos will collapse: we will make them ourselves “(if you want to try the recipe of the Silver Spoon).
When they renamed Raider to Twix I didn’t say anything, I wasn’t born
When they renamed StopCovid to TousAntiCovid, I didn’t say anything, I didn’t have COVID
When they renamed Speculoos to Biscoff, I said stop! #jesuisspeculoos https://t.co/NTK9IxjKhT— anthong (@anthong_r) November 3, 2020
The controversy has reasons that affect the national identity of a relatively young country, born in 1830. Marketing expert Julie Haspeslagh has explained to journalist Karen McHugh that Lotus Speculoos, like French fries and beer, are among the few things common to Belgians: “In addition to food and the Red Devils national football team, Belgium does not have an ingrained identity or a culture shared by all ». Changing the name of a biscuit handed down for many generations and which can be found, with its recognizable red brand, in all the cafes of the country, means in some way an attempt at a shared memory and an emotional unity that is among the few glues of country, especially as the choice is made to please foreign nations.
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In particular, Boone is targeting the US market, where it already sells one of the seven billion biscuits that the company – founded by his grandfather in 1932 to produce exclusively speculoos – produces every year. It now has 2,000 employees in 12 factories, including the first one opened in the United States last year. It is located in Mebane, North Carolina, where 35 employees have settled from Belgium to teach Americans the rules of production: it has been fine-tuned to the smallest detail, so much so that it took a year and a half of tests and adjustments before being operational. Lotus has penetrated the American market thanks to some airlines that serve its Speculoos, such as Delta Airlines, which has been doing it since 1986, and to some supermarket chains that also sell biscuit ice cream and spreadable cream.
For now, Boone’s business management, which says he eats five Speculoos a day, has been successful: since taking office, replacing his father Mathieu in 2011, Lotus Bakeries’ turnover has grown 122 percent to 612.7 million euros; net profit tripled, reaching 75.8 million euros. Despite the closure of the restaurant and the drop in the number of flights caused by the coronavirus pandemic, in the first half of this year sales are increased by 8.4 per cent.
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Boone responded to the controversy by saying that “we didn’t imagine such an emotional reaction, I take it as a compliment: it means that people are really connected to the brand.” He also specified that in Belgium, France and the Netherlands, the phrase “The Original Speculoos” will be added under the Biscoff brand: “the last thing we want is to deny our origins”.
Despite the attachment shown by the Belgians, speculoos are not a biscuit originally from Belgium, but they are common to an area ranging from France to Germany. Each town has its own recipe and the cookies are traditionally prepared in homes at the beginning of December and for the Christmas holidays, in particular for that of San Nicolò: they often depict episodes from the life of the saint. According to some, the origin of the name derives from the Latin speculum, mirror, because the wooden cookie molds were carved in a mirror image; others trace it back to Latin speculator what does it mean osservatore ed explorer and which would indicate San Nicolò; another hypothesis is that it comes from the word spice, which in Dutch means spice.
Speculoos in their molds prepared in Germany for Christmas 2017
(Rainer Jensen / dpa / ANSA)
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In all these countries, speculoos are thin, crunchy and caramelized, kneaded with usually white flour, brown sugar, butter and spices. The most spicy are the Dutch, and include cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom and white pepper, all spices widely used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when they were important from the East Indies. It seems that the Belgian version – much simpler, with just cinnamon and a little ginger – was born for those who could not afford the Dutch version, more sumptuous.
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On January 13, 1870, Antoine Deplée, a baker from Hasselt, a Flemish city in the province of Limburg, patented the recipe for the so-called Hasselt speculation, biscuits similar to very spicy «almond cake», which he also marketed in Brussels and Liege, where they are still widespread. In 1932 the baker Jan Boone opened his first speculoos factory in Lembeke, in the province of East Flanders, which in a short time managed to make the most popular in Belgium. It also helped the idea, in the 1950s, of wrapping them individually, turning them into a habit in which to indulge in restaurants and cafes. In the nineties, Lotus began exporting them outside Belgium by changing the name to Biscoff, to make it easier to remember for foreigners and immediately associate it with the coffee ritual, unknowingly laying the foundations for national unification these days.
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