Stéphane Ronse

The through-line

Almost everything Stéphane Ronse says circles back to a single paradox: the thing that made the company possible was not knowing what he was getting into. He describes starting up as climbing a mountain wrapped in cloud, "het is precies de Mount Everest dat je moet beklimmen, maar op het moment dat je begint aan uw beklimming is die berg in een grote mistwolk gehuld en ge ziet niet hoe hoog dat je moet, anders zou je er nooit aan beginnen" [2], and repeats the image with the Himalayas, adding that you need the luck of the fog so you cannot see how far there still is to climb [3]. He treats that ignorance as an asset rather than an embarrassment: "ik denk dat dat net de sterkte is van veel ondernemers, om in een bepaalde naïviteit te beginnen ondernemen, en daarmee ook disruptief te zijn in een bepaalde sector" [3]. Knowing nothing about retail or food is what allowed him to attack it differently [3].

The corollary is stated flatly and repeatedly, and it is the least comfortable thing in his material: he would not do it again. "Als mensen mij vragen zou je het opnieuw doen met de kennis die je nu hebt, dan zeg ik resoluut nee" [2], and "mocht ik toen de kennis gehad hebben die ik nu heb, dan denk ik dat ik dat parcours gewoon niet zou aangevat zijn" [1]. This is not regret about the outcome but a warning about the framing of entrepreneurship itself: "ondernemerschap ziet er altijd rooskleurig uit van de buitenkant, langs de binnenkant is dat niet altijd zo" [2], and the reality is far less rosy than events and awards suggest [1]. His summary formula, "ondernemen is twee stappen vooruit en één achteruit" [1], sits alongside the ambition that outran him entirely: the dream ten years ago was a thousand boxes a week, and "we zitten nu op 17.000 boksen per week" [1], from a starting position of "misschien €200 paar centen op een bankrekening" [1] (elsewhere given as €2,300 in savings [3]).

On starting before you are ready

Because preparation destroys naivety, he argues against long preparation phases. Staying too long in preparation kills startups, since you accumulate so much knowledge of the obstacles that you lose the naivety needed to begin at all [1]. Hence the instruction: "als je een idee hebt en dat idee lijkt een goed idee te zijn, just do it" [1], and adjust along the way [1]. That does not mean recklessness. His standing formulation is "je moet een goed doel hebben en je moet een berekend risico nemen" [3]. The social cost of starting is part of the picture too: "zelfs mijn dichte vrienden en mijn moeder zeiden van: zijt gij volledig zot?" [3].

The same instinct shows in how he read his first data. Among the first thirty boxes sold he saw no friend or family member at all, and instead of taking it as rejection he reframed it immediately: "misschien is dat wel een goed teken, dat mensen uw product kopen omdat ze erin geloven en niet omdat ze u willen steunen" [3]. Twenty strangers ordering in week one is stronger validation than sympathy purchases [1]. He also describes the sheer disbelief of early traction: "ik zat te kijken naar de Google Analytics en ik dacht dat ik in een droom zat" [1].

On bootstrapping and the danger of money

He is unapologetic about frugality: "ik ben een gierige West-Vlaming die elke euro op de dag van vandaag nog altijd probeert om te draaien" [2]. Foodbag could bootstrap because of a structural cash-flow advantage, customer payments landing before supplier invoices came due, combined with digital advertising that made experimentation cheap [1]. Little capital forced the organisation to stay lean and mean, reinvesting the first gross margins continuously, which produced the right steps in the right order and positive EBITDA after a year [3]. It also forced a permanent state of transition: the box-assembly process changed perhaps seven times in ten years, which he considers the ideal if exhausting trajectory compared with doing it "right in one go" on raised capital [2].

His sharpest warning is about the arrival of money rather than its absence. The moment a large investor turns up with cash is "zeer gevaarlijk moment. Dat is vaak het moment waarop het fout ziet lopen" [2], the point where companies hire senior managers who bring their own teams and open the marketing taps; he took single-digit millions and stayed lean instead of tens of millions [2]. Being at break-even when raising from business angels also strengthened his negotiating position and probably lifted the valuation, because the company was not a cash-burning machine [2]. Profitability meant he never needed external cash to survive and could therefore always choose strategic investors over financial ones, something he traces back to a founding business plan built in a simple Excel [2].

On knowing what is crucial and outsourcing the rest

He asks founders to identify the few elements genuinely critical to the business succeeding, and then to be honest about whether they can execute them. For Foodbag that was food photography [1]. His own photos would have sold nothing, so recipe photography went to Foodfoto, a partner still in place ten years later [2]. The principle he attaches to it is "schoenmaker blijf bij je leest": do not do everything yourself to save money, find a co-founder or an expert [1][2].

Timing runs alongside this. Professionalising too early is overkill, and a founder should carry a mental step-by-step plan of exactly which volume thresholds trigger which investments, whether that is an external transporter, custom IT or a first employee [1]. Measurement should be similarly spare: distil a few crucial KPIs out of the business plan and follow them weekly, which for Foodbag meant goods cost, cost per drop and assembly cost per box [1].

On why the box had to be Belgian

The product thesis was a deliberate rejection of the incumbents' approach. Rather than copying the exotic recipes of HelloFresh and Marley Spoon, Foodbag bet on recognisable recipes and local Belgian products, still the two core pillars [1]. His diagnosis of the international players is that their one big mistake was a lack of local identity [3]. He designed around familiar dishes, "worst met appelmoes", on the conviction that customers churn after two weeks if a weekly box is full of quinoa and bulgur [2]. He also treats this as structural rather than cosmetic defence: food is geographically bounded by ingredients, recipes and quality perception, and the Netherlands and Belgium eat very differently, which is Foodbag's protection against international entrants [2].

The product itself did move with the market. Half-wholegrain pasta went from a niche taboo to eighty percent of Foodbag's pastas in ten years, sourced through a Flemish-Walloon farmer collaboration, Bill Pasta, as consumer habits shifted markedly toward healthier eating [1].

On repeat purchase, and refusing to trick people into it

He rejects forced subscriptions on principle. "De kracht van herhaalkoop moet komen uit uw product. Mensen moeten zodanig overtuigd zijn van uw product en vandaar moet die kracht van die herhaalankoop komen" [1]. Repeat purchase must not come from "een slinkse marketingtruc"; subscriptions exist only as an optional convenience [1].

The delivery experience is treated as part of that product. Foodbag's "driver's first principle" means investing in the comfort, training and sense of belonging of its 55-plus drivers, because the person at the wheel determines delivery quality and is the physical face at the customer's door, which produced higher order frequency than working through external transporters [1]. There is a secondary revenue model too: brands pay to launch new products through Foodbag, because a recipe presents a product to consumers under ideal conditions, but he keeps it deliberately subordinate to the core meal-box business [1].

On competitors, mergers and one Belgian front

His most transferable tactical advice is to talk to competitors early and informally, long before there is anything to discuss. "Probeert wel op een open en informele manier contact hebben met elkaar, you never know what will happen" [2]. He built those relationships with Smartmat and 15gram years ahead of any deal, and they directly enabled both the merger and the acquisition [2][3]. Nothing may happen at first; years later it does [3].

The merger logic was defensive and additive at once. It was driven by the anticipation that HelloFresh and Marley Spoon would enter Belgium, making "one Belgian front" strategically necessary [2], and by a shared ambition to keep the market in Belgian hands while raising the barrier to entry, pooling common problems like last-mile distribution and IT development [3]. He states the ambition plainly: "eigenlijk willen we die freshfood e-commerce markt, hoe naïef dat dat ook is, voor een groot stuk in Belgische handen houden. Dat is eigenlijk onze droom" [3]. The test he applies to any such move is "je moet zorgen dat 1 + 1 niet twee is maar drie is als je aan zoiets denkt" [1]: consolidated volume made in-house cooled last-mile logistics possible, which itself became a barrier because no other active cooled distribution network existed in the market [1].

The vindication came immediately. With unified IT, its own last-mile network and professionalised fulfilment, Foodbag was "net klaar" when COVID arrived [2], and "we zijn op twee weken tijd verdrievoudigd in volumes" [2], described elsewhere as volumes tripling in a single week [1]. Without the merger it could not have coped [1]. Not every strategic move worked: Rayon was launched as a hedge because meal-box and e-grocery models seemed to be converging, and was shut down when growth proved slower and last-mile consolidation more complex than expected [2].

On investors, ownership and letting go

Before taking money he invested in alignment moments to test strategy, values and norms, and found that investors were value-driven people contributing network and know-how rather than the spreadsheet-focused suits he had imagined [3]. He also insists on structure when control changes hands: when selling a majority stake, negotiate upfront guarantees on day-to-day management autonomy and final say on strategy [3]. The ownership maths he lives by is "liever een klein stuk van een grote taart dan een groot stuk van een kleine taart" [3].

The emotional discipline came from outside. Rudy De Kerpel of Eurotuin told him, "Stefan, stopt me naar uw bedrijf te kijken als zijnde uw kind, want dat is het niet" [3], advice he credits with helping him accept Colruyt Group's entry and a plausible eventual exit to them [2]. Entrepreneurs must decouple emotion from rationality at exit moments; the company is a lever to create things for the business and for yourself [3]. The same rationality governed a co-founder's early departure: splitting professionally at the right moment, while you can still talk constructively, turned the challenge into the opportunity to bring in business angels [3]. It also governed his own exit from the CEO seat, which he took after two years of doubt because the organisation's phase called for a manager's skillset rather than an entrepreneur's, on the view that knowing what gives you energy and what the organisation needs matters more than clinging to the top role [1].

He applies the same anti-ceremony instinct to governance: use the board as a discussion platform rather than an information dump, send reporting in advance as a memo, take twenty minutes for questions, then spend the meeting on strategy so the talent around the table is actually used [1].

On staying in Day One mode

Scale is not an excuse to slow down. "Als organisatie moet je altijd in een day one modus proberen te blijven" [1], and the failure condition is explicit: "vanaf dat uw organisatie in een Day Two modus gaat is dat eigenlijk het moment waar dat je door die andere speedbootjes zult voorbij gestoken worden" [3]. The startup mentality has to be preserved throughout the structure even as the company grows into a container ship [3]. The scale he is describing is not abstract: "wij leveren nu bij een 13.000 gezinnen per week, een Sportpaleis vol" [2], later 17,000 boxes a week [1].

On entrepreneurial versus entrepreneur

He draws a firm distinction when talking about how entrepreneurship is promoted. "Ik vind dat we niet iedereen moeten stimuleren om ondernemer te worden, maar ik vind wel dat we mensen moeten stimuleren om ondernemend te worden" [1]. You can be entrepreneurial as an employee or as a volunteer [1]. Read against his refusal to do it all again and his insistence that the inside of entrepreneurship does not match the outside [1][2], this is the coherent close of his argument rather than a throwaway line.

Takeaways

• Start before you know too much: long preparation phases accumulate knowledge of obstacles and destroy the naivety needed to begin, so "just do it" and adjust as you go, with a good goal and a calculated risk [1][3].
• Treat the arrival of investor cash as the highest-risk moment, not the safest: that is when companies hire senior management with their own teams and open the marketing taps, so raise single-digit millions and stay lean [2].
• Reach break-even before raising; it strengthens negotiating position, likely lifts valuation, and lets you choose strategic investors over financial ones [2].
• Name the two or three things your business genuinely lives or dies by, and if you cannot do them well, hand them to an expert; Foodbag outsourced recipe photography to Foodfoto and kept that partner for ten years [1][2].
• Do not manufacture repeat purchase: refuse forced subscriptions and make retention come from product conviction, "niet een slinkse marketingtruc" [1].
• Build informal relationships with competitors years before you need them; those conversations enabled both the Smartmat merger and the 15gram acquisition [2][3].
• Only consolidate when the combination is genuinely additive, "1 + 1 niet twee is maar drie", the merger unlocked in-house cooled last-mile logistics and let Foodbag absorb a tripling of volumes during COVID [1][2].
• Track a handful of KPIs weekly rather than a dashboard: for Foodbag, goods cost, cost per drop and assembly cost per box [1].
• Step aside when the organisation's phase needs a different skillset, and stop treating the company as your child so exit decisions stay rational [1][3].