They paid me €400 to film an Albert Heijn commercial under my balcony
I'm such an AH fanboi that I probably would have done it for free.
Everybody eats, every day, which means we must continually replenish our bodies with sustenance from somewhere. Most of us go to the supermarket.
I love grocery stores. I’ve seen a lot of them in the US, from podunk Winn-Dixie’s, Piggly-Wiggly’s, and Harris Teeters in the Deep South to Albertson’s, Ralph’s, and the enormous Fred Meyers in the far West. I enjoy cruising the aisles and examining the end caps to discover weird regional potato chip brands and cut-rate prices on down-home style pickles.
There used to be a healthy diversity and even a thriving competition between regional, family-run supermarkets in the US, but that died out over the last 30 years as corporations gobbled them all up, consolidating them under their umbrella brands. They get bought, they eventually get renovated, and then they’re just another boring Safeway.
Before I left America, I was very down on supermarkets. They were way too big and full of garbage food, offering endless rows of unhealthy choices from the same handful of companies, who jockey for placement in the aisles via a pay-to-play marketing system. They’re overwhelming in so many ways. But then I moved to the Netherlands and discovered Albert Heijn. I’m back in love with supermarkets again.
Albert Heijn, or “Appie” as some Dutch call it, is a ubiquitous brand that is much-loved by the Dutch. Founded by one Albert Heijn in 1887 in the city of Zaandam, just north of Amsterdam, their stores are nearly everywhere in the country, with nearly 1,200 locations. It’s akin to Starbucks in the US; there’s one in every village.
With 37% of market share, they maintain a position of dominance among single-brand supermarkets in the Netherlands, followed by Jumbo with 21%. There are other players, like the European Superunie coop (26% combined share), which houses a number of tiny grocery brands (eg, Coop, Deka, Spar), and of course the ever-encroaching German discounters Aldi (5%) Lidl (11%), which even Americans are becoming acquainted with as they continue to spread their no-frills stores around the globe.
It’s no consumer paradise, but AH is efficient AF
I love all of the things about Albert Heijn, especially the aspects that are polar opposite to how American supermarkets work.
A typical AH is probably one-tenth the size of a typical US grocery store, and each one is a little bit different because they’re incorporated into old neighborhoods and not built as standalone new storefronts with giant parking lots. In fact, there are practically no AH parking lots because most people just walk or bike to their local store, which is often right around the corner for most people who live in a city.
To say that there is not as much product to choose from here as in the US is a massive understatement. There isn’t demand here for 20 different types of cereal. There are three choices, pick one. But more importantly, businesses in this tiny, densely populated nation don’t have the space to store extra product. This has made the Dutch pretty good at just-in-time inventory. I think another reason they are so good at it is that the Dutch don’t like waste. Call them thrifty if you want to be generous and avoid calling them cheap, but they don’t leave a lot of dead stock on the shelves. They want everything to move quickly and food to remain unspoiled, which means that shelf space needs to be allocated carefully.
On the inside, Albert Heijn stores look similar and familiar, but they all have interesting, sometimes unexpected, layouts. They also don’t all carry the same items. They mostly do, but there is a surprising amount of variation that, one hopes, is based on some sort of logic. For example, there is a specific flavour of berry granola that I prefer, but I’ve only ever found it at one AH, so I don’t get it very often. I am unable to get into a rut and buy the same things again and again because what I want is sometimes out of stock. I consider that a plus because I am too wont to fall into routine.
Not only is the breadth of choice not very wide, the depth of the stock on the shelves is not very deep. There is only one small space on the shelf for my favorite brand of beer, Gulpener, and only four six-packs fit into that space. Once those four are gone, it might not be restocked until tomorrow. On a sunny Saturday in the summer? Forget about it. The place is ransacked. Not even a decent bottle of sparkling water to be found.
This is especially true of bread. If you arrive at the AH after 7 pm, there may simply be no bread left. But this, again, is a boon. While it may just be supermarket bread, it is pretty tasty bread because they bake almost all of it fresh every day, so it’s worth getting there early to get your favourite brown bread. I love knowing that if it’s on the shelf, it’s fresh. It won’t last long, though, because they don’t put preservatives in the bread. Bread is such a staple of the Dutch diet that I guess it’s assumed it will be eaten before it starts to grow mold. Judging by the emptiness of the bread section in every AH after dinner time, this is a safe assumption.
This “sold out” shopping experience might quietly enrage consumers in the US, who may seek out a store employee and badger them to “go look in the back” to see if there’s more. But that’s just the way it is here. There is no more in the back. Come back tomorrow. I very much appreciate and respect this simplicity. That said, I do sometimes find myself showing up late to the store, stopping by after a long sunset bike ride, to find that my favourite flavour of stroopwafel is once again out of reach. But then I just buy a different kind of stroopwafel and stop worrying so much.
All those shelves do eventually get restocked by employees, who are almost exclusively teenagers. Working at a grocery store here is not a full-time job; more akin to a summer job before university in America. There might be one cashier if you need to pay by cash, which may be the case if you’re a tourist because AH does not accept credit cards, only Dutch debit cards. Otherwise, you live like a local and check yourself out by scanning barcodes. It’s all incredibly efficient because these machines do not work by trying to balance weight like in America, which is probably what frustrates people and makes them feel like suspected thieves. They may also see self checkout as a downsizing of the workforce, which, in truth, it most certainly is. But again, the jobs in grocery stores here are for teenagers.
It all works surprisingly well, and going to AH is a breeze, so many people end up going a lot during the week, especially if you’re an AH fanboi like me.
AH knows how to give you the feels
What Albert Heijn really excels at is the nuts and bolts of building a regional consumer grocery brand. They’ve always got great 2e Gratis deals (the equivalent to BOGO), and they’re always running fun promotions. It reminds me of the grocery store competition days of yore when I grew up in the 70s, when my mom and dad collected grocery store green stamps to buy dishes or Dr. Seuss books. Albert Heijn has given out a lot of similar interesting goodies over the years. I have a delftware coffee cup that came from an AH promotion from decades past that I bought at a kringloopwinkel (thrift store).
They’re also really into seasonality. Every spring, AH gives out seeds with little planting pots, for children and adults alike. They also have seasonal-only foods. I worship their tomahawk pork chops, but they’re only available in the spring and summer. Come September: too bad, so sad, the seasons change. But thankfully, they keep coming back every spring. This isn’t the case for every item. AH experiments a lot. Sometimes your favorite stroopwafel will be discontinued, forever. This happened to me, and I am still sad about missing out on dark cocoa stroopwafels. Helaas pindakaas.
The Albert Heijn universe
Albert Heijn has a mascot, or rather a pack of them. They’re hamsters. While one might initially think it would be risky to associate your grocery store brand with a small, hairy rodent that drops a lot of feces as it roots around looking for spilled dried goods, the hamster is an especially apt choice for a mascot because the word “hamster” has an extra meaning in Dutch. The verb hamsteren literally means “to hoard” like a hamster. Thus, when you’re grabbing those 2e Gratis deals off the shelves at the Albert Heijn, you’re “hamsteren”.
In addition to their high-quality and reliably hilarious animated animal mascots, AH goes big with their filmed commercials. For many years, their commercials featured beloved Dutch actor Harry Piekema as Henk van Dalen, a silly Albert Heijn store manager who was always doing zany things around the store with customers, sometimes also with the hamsters. He retired a decade ago, putting a stop to the ad campaign for a few years. But they brought it back right before I moved here, introducing a store manager replacement for Henk - a woman.
Ilsa, played by the radiant Randy Fokke, is the new store manager. While she’s not as zany as Henk, I think she’s enormously talented and loveable. She’s also a mom, and the campaign brings an entire cast of family characters with her. Her bumbling husband plays football on the weekends and is, like all dads, always roaming around the house looking for snacks and accidentally getting into mischief. They have a son, Tommy, and a cat named Muis. Last year, they added a new member of the family when their daughter was born. But the best character is the one that has a mischievious side like the old manager Henk did - Oma, the grandmother character. Oma steals the show in almost every commercial she’s in, even if it’s only for the briefest moment.
These ad campaigns have deep story arcs, which go even deeper on Instagram. They pack so much into one or two scenes that sometimes you have to watch the commercial many times just to catch the little details. I think it’s all very artfully done, and I enjoy the language practice because they speak extremely fast, with a lot of slang and sayings, just like real Dutch people do. Sometimes I actually laugh out loud, which is rare for me and commercials.
Mijn mooie balkon
I’m extremely blessed to have a community garden right underneath my balcony.
The plot of the building I live in fills an entire block, and its expansive internal courtyard was turned into a community garden about a dozen years ago. I live on the top floor of the building on the third floor (that’s the fourth floor to Americans), and I have an outstanding view of the garden from my balcony. The garden has a cute but unwieldy name: i can change the world with my two hands.
This is my first ever balcony, and it has changed my life, connecting me much more deeply to the outside world, in particular to plants and bees and butterflies and birds and cats. It really connects me to the outside world in the summer when it’s balls-out hot up here on the top floor. I live with my doors and windows permanently open.
The gardens underneath my balcony aren’t necessarily for residents of the building, but for people who live in the surrounding neighbourhoods, mostly people who live in the West section of the city. (No, I don’t have a plot). You’ll find one or two regulars puttering around during the weekdays, tending their sections and maintaining a small network of rain barrels, compost tumblers, and a geodesic dome, inside of which grapes and tropical plants are grown. On weekends, more people show up, whole families, and it’s a beautiful sight to see everyone working hard to beautify my personal landscape.
On some Saturdays, during the nicer parts of the year, they open a Tuinkafe, and visitors can buy a coffee or tea made with herbs from the garden. They always have a pastry or dessert made from fruits they’ve grown in the dome. You can sit in one of the many little chairs and benches tucked away in the corners under flowering bushes. It’s sublime.
Two years ago, in spring, as I was leaving my apartment, I encountered a man outside who was scouting the garden as a location for a TV commercial. He had already talked to Jorin, a young lady who lives in one of the ground-floor apartments, about using her backyard for a film shoot. He was looking for the people whose apartments had balconies above the location, one of which was mine. They were creating a special, lengthy commercial just in time for the summer European football championship, which was highly anticipated by Dutch football fans. They’re extremely proud of their boys in orange. My ears perked up when he said the commercial was for Albert Heijn. My jaw dropped when he offered me 400 euros to use my balcony.
He offered me extra money if I would serve as an extra on the balcony, but I flatly refused that offer. I’ve already served my time as an extra. I know how boring it is.
Alles voor Oranje
The film shoot was lengthy, lasting the entire weekend, but it was fun to watch them work, while I planted my Albert Heijn seeds in my balcony pots in preparation for summer. It was also interesting to see them move big equipment over the building with a crane, which is somewhat commonplace here but always something to see. They put a massive light on my balcony that I feared might electrocute me.
I think the end result is a small masterpiece, worth repeated viewings to catch all the little details. I’ve certainly watched it a lot of times, always waiting for the moments where I can glimpse my balcony as the bitterballen roll down the hamster-tube contraption they constructed on the side of the building.
It’s narrated by Ilsa, the AH store manager. The story opens with her giving a rousing speech about the coming game, ostensibly to the football players, or perhaps to the entire nation. In a marvel of marketing synergy, everyone is wearing the AH tattoos and stickers that were given away by AH as part of the promotion. They’re all, everyone across the nation, getting ready for the big game, walking through the neighbourhood on the way to the party, pouring snacks into bowls, getting an extension cord, pulling the TV outside and into the backyard - my back yard!
All so the community can watch the big game together, in solidarity and celebration.
Alles voor Oranje!
In the end, they’re just commercials and marketing campaigns, but it was fun to be part of a neighbourhood event: that time they filmed a commercial in the community garden. Albert Heijn has found a perfect audience in this old man who sits on his balcony, surrounded by wildflowers, listening to the birds sing, occasionally belting out his own “caw” when the neighbours aren’t looking, trying to make friends with the crow who perches up on the highest chimney, way up in the corner.
Furthermore
DJ Dutch Direct has a playlist to get you in the mood for the changing season: A Dozen Songs for Inducing Spring Fever. Get it on Apple Music or Spotify. It’s got a bunch of Dutch songs on it, including this shoulda been a big hit by Pussycat. 👇
I actually ended up going to one of the UEFA games at Johan Cruiff Stadium with my friends from San Francisco who used to live in Amsterdam, Thor and Amy, along with their son Quinn. Netherlands beat North Macedonia with this goal. 👇
We all remember the early days of the pandemic, when toilet paper futures shot through the roof and consumers suddenly became disaster preppers. At that time, the Dutch government issued a stern warning to its citizens: niet hamsteren. Do not hoard. A Dutch sign language interpretor became a small celebrity for her work signing the phrase. You might have seen the GIF. 👇