Smart cookies: Maison Dandoy reclaims its place in the biscuit market

There is something both reassuringly familiar and strangely quirky about Maison Dandoy, the 186-year-old bakery that is coolly reinventing itself. Their boutiques in Brussels, Waterloo and Tokyo are arranged with the slick precision of Apple stores. Yet the warm, exquisite flavours of their speculoos biscuits, lemon cakes, gingerbread and other delicacies are enough to transport sweet-toothed visitors back to their childhood kitchen.

This is part of a scheme that has successfully reinvigorated the illustrious biscuit- and cake-maker as it approaches its third century. After years in which it risked drifting into stuffiness and obscurity, Maison Dandoy is now firmly back in Brussels as one of the city’s – and the country’s – many delicious food purveyors.

Much of the credit for the update lies with one of the scions of the Dandoy family, Alexandre Helson. “We relaunched in 2012, and it was really a big, big move for us. Our aim was to transform a local family business into a global family brand,” he says.

Helson is officially Dandoy’s business development manager, reporting to his father, CEO Bernard. However, it is Alexandre, just 29, who is the driving creative force behind Dandoy’s marketing.

He glides around the new offices and production plant in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert as he explains the heritage and the baking process. As well as revamping its brand, Dandoy uprooted in 2014 from its former home near Rue Dansaert in central Brussels. This is where they had been for 40 years, in an old print works with apartments, where Helson himself was born. Before that, Dandoy was based in Rue au Beurre, the address near the Grand’ Place that still features on the packaging.

The new factory has much more space, with easy-to-maintain plastic and metal surfaces. Ingredients are stored in large tubs. The main trinity is flour, sugar and butter, all from Belgium. Others include powdered ginger, cinnamon, vanilla, cloves, pistachios and chocolate. Marzipan is made on site, mixing powdered almonds with sugar.

In the centre of the kitchen is Dandoy’s chef Salem, a man with a finely manicured beard who has been there for 24 years. But he’s far from the longest-serving member of staff: that would be Daniel, a production supervisor who started when he was just 15 and has been there for 43 years.

Helson is laid-back as he tours the floor. He points to the new biscuit making machines, which are very similar to those from over a century ago, only with electric power and resin drum moulds. And the traditional carved wooden moulds are still used for large speculoos biscuits, some of which are over a metre long. Some of the newer moulds are specifically commissioned for clients like Delvaux and ING. “Saint-Nicolas is the biggest day of the year for Dandoy,” Helson says, noting that they produce a tonne of speculoos a day during that period.

With lines including the Earl Grey, the Florentine, langue de chat (cat tongue), feuilles de palmier (palm leaves), pain à la grecque (literally Greek bread, or bread pudding with cinnamon) Dandoy makes 50 products. One of the oldest and most famous, the biscotte – or rusk – was so popular that it was the only product Dandoy was allowed to make during the rationing era of the 1930s and World War Two.

But while their products are as delicious as they were when they first emerged from Jean-Baptiste Dandoy’s oven in 1829, the image of the brand has seemed stale in recent years. The previous packaging had classical gold lettering over a maroon label, but there were many confusing exceptions, with different types of packaging. None of this did much to win new customers, who knew little about the bakery’s illustrious background. “It was too old before. It felt it was aimed just at old grandmothers. It needed to feel more alive,” Helson says.

Helson, whose master’s thesis was on his family’s firm, felt it failed to connect with younger generations, and he enlisted a design agency to help revive it. “I knew we had to put in place a marketing strategy, but didn’t realise how big it would be,” he says. The resulting strategy overhauled the entire look of the bakery, from its packaging and its boutiques to its branding and slogans. It is respectful of the past, while showing an endearing cheekiness, retaining Maison Dandoy’s legacy while updating it. “We looked at brands like Ladurée and Hermés to learn about consistency,” Helson says. “For us, the golden dot is our signature.”

Dandoy’s central product is the speculoos, Belgium’s most traditional biscuit, but one Helson wanted to claim for his own. He argued that Maison Dandoy’s long history of baking the delicacy meant it could identify with speculoos as much as Dijon’s Maille could with French mustard.

But the resulting slogans were deliberately playful, as Helson felt the tone needed to reflect Maison Dandoy’s warm, generous and human character. “Dandoy is about people, about Brussels, about smiles. For us, biscuits should be for everyone,” he says. This offset the subtle high-end branding of the products as the most sumptuous of biscuits – the quirkiness would undercut any pricing concerns. “It has humour. It’s not pretentious, not bling bling. Is it luxury? Who cares! Maison Dandoy is fun. It’s about pleasure.”

The rebranding also brought back the original Dandoy logo, a windmill. “The logo reflects the DNA of the brand,” Helson says, adding that even he is unsure of its origins, but assumes it has something to do with the traditional flour mills.

Another homecoming was the original company name, Maison Dandoy, harking back to its humble origins and unique family history in the heart of Brussels. “We looked back to our heritage when we changed our branding from Dandoy to Maison Dandoy,” says Helson. “We date back to 1829, after all. We’re a year older than Belgium itself.”

The results were emphatic: sales rose 20 percent after the 2012 rebrand, to €5.6 million. But Helson is far from done in repositioning Dandoy.

One aim, in line with the theme of oddball sophistication, is associating Dandoy with art and culture. It has already been a supplier for Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester, and ultra-hip Parisian store Collette is also asking to stock its products.

And there are special links with luxury leather goods maker Delvaux, which was also founded in 1829 and had a factory in the same Dansaert neighbourhood. Delvaux made a single special bag for Dandoy, covered in gold dots, when they celebrated their 185th birthday together in 2014: it was won by a lucky buyer of the Dandoy 185 package that hid a golden ticket.

There are other ventures, too. Dandoy’s latest boutique on Place Stéphanie in Brussels is testing a €5 coffee and biscuit pack, as the bakery dips its toes into the takeaway coffee market. Meanwhile, Helson is pondering exports, and how to sell to retailers. “Dandoy is not suited to be stacked on shelves,” he says. “We have our identity, and want people to encounter our products in the right way.”

 This article was first published in the Wab magazine, winter 2015/2016