A development process in ownership, community and animated organising
Boot Koffie is a beautiful specialty coffee roastery, shop and café in Baarn, with 24 inspired employees. A family business, Boot Koffie has been operating since 1973 from motives focused on quality, fair cooperation and social prices for coffee farmers.
Barend Boot, second-generation owner and with no successor in the family, is keen to pass the company on to the future. In 2024, he started a development process with Economy Transformers. Together, we explore what it means to pass on a business in a new way, in ownership and in spirit. This process unfolds in three steps, which we explain below.
1. Letting go as an act of forward-looking leadership
In the first phase, Barend explored questions such as:
“How do I pass on the company?”
“What are my key principles?”
“How do I find a way through my personal financial uncertainty without burdening Boot Koffie's future?”
At the end of 2024, Barend took an important step: he formally renounced the possibility of ever selling Boot Koffie again. In doing so, he gave shape to a fundamental principle:
Boat Coffee is of itself.
Ownership is henceforth removed from the market, and permanently serves the greater good: shared well-being, cooperation and community.
Boot Coffee shares are now held by the Donor Impact Invest Fund (DIIF). Thanks to Jaap Doorman, Heleen Kuijck, Gijsbert Koren, Ignaz Anderson and the DIIF team for their contribution to this careful handover.
2. Anchoring Boot Coffee's principles
Together with Darja Koster and the wider team, Boot Koffie has entered a second phase:
What are the organisation's supporting principles? And how do we secure these for the future? Some of the guiding principles that have been placed at the centre of this process:
- Profit is not an end in itself, but a means to create value for the entire coffee community.
- Meeting and connecting are not means but ends in themselves.
- Every employee is invited to work from their own passion and strength and take initiative.
Because Boot Coffee now ‘belongs to itself’ - and so ownership can no longer be traded for individual gain - there is room for these principles to live on.
3. Space for flourishing and shared leadership
The third, and most challenging, phase has now begun. That one is about the question: “How do we build an organisational form in which everyone can flourish and Boot Coffee's principles become a reality?”
How do we translate our principles into concrete forms of work? How do we create space in which people can connect to the whole, without losing themselves?
Experiences about the process so far:
Barend puts it like this:
“The most beautiful insight for me is that I no longer have to see every struggle, internally or with myself, as a problem or frustration, but as food for development. I experience this process as a shining pearl.”
Darja adds:
“A year ago, I was introduced to this innovative way of doing business. A year full of (self)insights, confrontational and inspiring. Extremely instructive in all respects. I am curious to see how BOOT Coffee will continue to blossom in the coming year.”
Economy Transformers will continue to be involved in this development process as a participant in the steps ahead. We wish companies like Boot Koffie that ownership, cooperation and inner inspiration come together, enabling everyone within this coffee community in a human- and Earth-worthy manner.
—
Jennifer Benson
Economy Transformers