La Glacière, a seasonal business that can be prepared all year round

Then with the return of the sunny days heat waveRestaurants, bars, hotels, caterers and event organizers flocked there ice cubes. This bodes well for the few companies that e.g The cooler in Brussels, have made the production and distribution of ice cubes, crushed ice and dry ice their main activity. However, we are wrong if we think that only this season they will go through the controls thoroughly…

“Making ice cubes isn’t like running a nuclear power plant, it’s not complicated,” he explains Koen Torrekenswho bought La Glacière in 2015 with his brother Bart and their wives, took over the management alone with his wife in 2017. “The challenge is to have enough ice cubes available when the customer needs them. Our machines have a limited capacity; The production of very square, very transparent and very cold ice cubes takes time. In view of the explosion in demand, we could never have enough capacity in the summer. It is therefore necessary to produce them in winter and store them in anticipation of summer. The difficulty returns to the inventorywhich needs to be well planned throughout the year.”

Who says shares, says cold shop. Since La Glacière can only accommodate a few dozen pallets at its headquarters on rue de la Glacière in Saint-Gilles, the company uses the services of the partner Fr Agra, along the canal in Molenbeek to store the majority of its ice cubes, ie several thousand pallets. To note that Bart Torrekens, Koen’s brother founded the same company in Oudenaarde from another company without shareholder ties, icelanders. “We stand in solidarity with each other,” smiles Koen. In concrete terms, this means that in the event of a storage bottleneck, the “sister” company La Glacière can supply.

“The complexity of trade resides in its logistics“, adds Koen Torrekens. Because it’s also about delivering the ice cubes quickly. Expect half an hour to an hour at most. La Glacière serves Greater Brussels and allows himself a few ideas to Leuven or Namur. In the capital, the few drivers divide the zones into districts. Its main customers are Brussels bars and restaurants and caterers. “We supply between 200 and 300 restaurants in the capital, including starred restaurants, but also ethnic and small bars. Caterers have fewer customers but order larger volumes.”

The details are not left out. They also come to get ice cubes from their home, including their shop in Saint-Gilles. “If you’re throwing a party in your backyard with dozens of guests, you’ll need 30 to 40 kilos of ice cubes to keep your drinks cool. You’re unlikely to find that many at once in a supermarket.”

As for dry ice (-80 C°), which represents 20 to 25% of its turnover, it is intended both for the needs of laboratories and for catering establishments and event organizers, who appreciate it for the smoke it generates.

To Two difficult years because of the corona virus and its impact on the Horeca sector, La Glacière is performing well in 2022. The impact of a catch-up movement Post-Covid with the return of weddings, parties and festivals and more than two months of generous weather.

“In addition to the warming and the increase in hot days, we benefit from this two phenomenaKoen Torrekens continues: the fact that we consume less beer and more cocktails, with or without alcohol, in bars and restaurants, on the one hand and the arrival of an Anglo-Saxon tradition here Ice cubes on the other hand: Americans and English add it everywhere, in their lemonades, their alcohols… The private consumption of ice cubes is therefore also increasing in our latitudes.”

Without viruses there is activity in structural growth. To the point that Koen Torrekens is now aiming for enlarge the fundamentals of its business, an equation as complicated as managing its logistics. “We have the advantages and disadvantages of being based in the city, he says: it’s difficult to expand, but at the same time we’re close to the heart of Brussels, where things happen.”

So it’s not It is no coincidence that La Glacière is 200 meters from its ancestor, who was born in 1875 (and closed in 1993) on the heights of Saint-Gilles, in the street that gave it its name: from there it merges with the city, its bars and its restaurants…