tHis tea and coffee flower perfume fills the air of Zonnetje (The Sun) behind the counter, with Marie Louise’s Bellder measuring loose leaf tea and surrounding the black leaves in a packet of paper. The mahogany-colored shelves stack pots containing beans from Java, Ethiopia, Java and India, alongside the Bric-a-Brac, including vintage tea cans and old master-style photos.
But less than two months later, the sun will set in this cozy store in Amsterdam, founded in 1642. The rent is too high for the owner.
The energetic 76-year-old Belder, who took over from his British family 26 years ago, paid 975 guilders (approximately 440 euros or £376) a month in 1999. Currently, she expects bills of up to 4,500 euros. It was reduced from 6,000 euros by independent arbiters, but represents a significant increase of 3,000 euros that she is currently paying.
“It makes me sick, that’s all I can say,” she said with a drink of Ceylon tea. Traditional shops said “everything is dying” as rents are rising.
Since Het Parool, a newspaper based in Amsterdam Last week it was closedshe said she received a big response from customers – “Love, only love.”
As another independent store closes, fears are growing that the city will become increasingly dominated by tourist-friendly chain stores and shops.
Johannes Wilhelm, a 63-year-old local businessman, had been circulating for some Rabsan Sucheon, but said “Sonnetje’s impending loss is a real shame. “There are lots of cheese and Nutella pancakes, tourists of all kinds. The tourists are in good spirits. [and] good. But this should be here too,” he said.
Rents are rising at “the most popular high street retailers” across the Netherlands. One Market Analyst.
The future of shop sites is uncertain, but Karel Loeff, director of conservation organization Heemschut, observes that when only traders move, it tends to mean that larger companies with more standardized offers will move.
Founded in 1642, Haarlemmerdijk’s shop began by selling herbs, coal and buckets of water, but as the Dutch Empire flourished, it served tea and coffee.
In a modern shop, Belder is a blend that took 2.5 years to soak in the Assam leaves of bergamot for three days to make Earl Grey in a cold cellar. She once sold 350 different teas, but her offers fell sharply as she ran through her stock.
Loeff said that preserving one of Heemschut’s purposes, life heritage, was extremely difficult.
“You can save wooden beams and shelves, but you can’t save the functionality. This is not an original tea shop. This should be preserved in the future.”
Local shops, run by private owners for decades, “make the city unique,” he continued. “If you push them away and only have standard brands and shops, the city’s charm will disappear.”
Amsterdam has been working on how to preserve its heritage for years, facing a growing number of homogenous chains and tourism-friendly novelty shops selling sweets and rubber ducks at its historic centres. In 2017, the city government announced that it would prevent tourist-friendly retailers, mainly bicycle rental companies and cheese shops, from opening in parts of the city centre.
Iris Hagemans, an urban geographyist at the University of Applied Sciences at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, warned of generalization. In Amsterdam, she said, there are places where tourism has created “a monoculture in the shopping landscape.” However, “the atmosphere is completely different” hundreds of meters away, and the shops, facing reduced demand from residents and competition from online shopping, benefit from footsteps of tourists. “I think this monoculture is sometimes portrayed as a kind of oil spill that ultimately spreads across the city, but the effect is much more local.”
Government support for independent businesses, such as interventions to manage commercial rent, has been a difficult area, she said. “There could be a pretty big gap between the types of shops people claim to see in their neighborhoods and the kinds of shops that you actually see often. I think there’s a risk there’s a risk that supports features that aren’t actually in demand.”
Hagemans supports government actions to protect basic needs, including access to healthy foods, healthcare and other important services, but also warns them of their status as a taste arbitrator. “The retail industry should be able to be market-ready and dynamic, and it’s democratic in the way you vote in your wallet.”
Following the road from “Zonnetje” near the pizza joint and lemonade shop, a banner has been raised to mark Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary, falling in October. Velder has heard that they plan to support small business owners this anniversary.
