The name says it all: Fruit At Work delivers fruit baskets to businesses. But not just any fruit: every basket is 100% fair trade and delivered by bike – wherever possible. Sustainability is embedded in the company’s DNA at every stage. An interview with the owners, Yannick and Youri Aerts.
Fruit At Work is a family business founded in 2008 by Youri Aerts, who brought his father’s idea to life. His father had been inspired by a customer at whose premises he had seen, one summer’s day, a student packing local fruit – apples, pears, cherries… – which was then delivered to local businesses. This inspired him to develop the idea on a larger scale. In 2015, his brother Yannick joined him. Youri (on the right in the photo) is in charge of day-to-day operations, whilst Yannick (on the left in the photo) focuses more on strategy.
Today, Fruit At Work delivers to over 3,000 customers across Belgium every week from its packing facility in Sint-Truiden. These customers are very diverse: they range from the local tyre shop to the major bank with branches throughout Belgium. Not to mention schools, through which Fruit At Work provides fair trade fruit to 70,000 children in Flanders.
The Fairtrade XS is the smallest fruit basket in the range, enough to supply 2 to 3 people with fruit for a whole working week. For larger offices, there are standard baskets containing 5–8 to 10 kg of fruit. The contents are flexible and can be tailored to the needs of large companies.
Sustainability as a guiding principle
“If I had to describe Fruit At Work in one word, I’d choose ‘appreciation’,” explains Yannick. “Appreciation for the customer, for nature, for suppliers, for everyone involved in the supply chain. Our slogan is ‘Honesty is delicious’. And we want to apply that to everything we do.”
Fruit At Work believes it is its responsibility to deliver a quality product to the customer. It is the company that decides the level of sustainability of the product the customer receives. “At no point has the market demanded that the fruit we offer be fair trade, that Belgian farmers receive a fair price, or that transport be by bicycle. We have taken all these measures because we ourselves are convinced of the importance of sustainability and we communicate this to the customer,” explains Yannick.
Since 2018, Fruit At Work’s tropical fruits have carried the Fairtrade label. A few years later, the Belgian fruits were also certified under the ‘Prix Juste Producteur’ label. As a result, the entire fruit basket now consists of fair-trade fruit. During the same period, the family-run business began using bicycles as a means of transport, first in the city centre of Ghent, then in Antwerp, Brussels, Mechelen, Leuven and Liège. After all, how can you offer a healthy product to your customers if its transport pollutes the air they breathe? So they opted for bicycles. It is certainly not the cheapest option, as they incur higher transport costs than their competitors, but it is the most environmentally friendly. Whenever they set up in a new city, they call on bicycle couriers – the ‘Flandrians’, as they call them – and work with them to assess the volume that can be delivered and transported. In this way, they give them the opportunity to grow.
The importance of communication
“To convince the customer of the benefits of sustainability, you must first ensure that the product is good: the quality, the service… and only then does the rest follow,” explains Youri. Communication is key in this regard. Whether online, offline or on the packaging. Fruit At Work was appointed an SDG Ambassador by the United Nations in 2023, as one of the first four companies in the world, and highlights this on its packaging. That’s what makes us unique, Yannick proudly declares. “Everything we do in terms of sustainability is driven by our convictions, not because the customer asks for it or because the law requires us to.”
“It’s still very difficult to get the message across to customers, but it’s so important. Often, people don’t even know that there’s a fair-trade and sustainable option for fruit baskets,” explains Youri. “A few years ago, sustainability suddenly became a priority for companies. CSRD legislation required companies to report on their sustainability performance, and this requirement also extended to small businesses. Thousands of points had to be accounted for in sustainability reports. The arrival of the omnibus* somewhat dampened this trend, and suddenly, sustainability became less important.”
Youri notes, however, that more and more companies are partnering with them because of their identity. For example, companies specifically seek out fair-trade products and turn to Fruit At Work because it is the only supplier offering this type of product on the Belgian market. In doing so, they discover other aspects of the story, such as the fact that Belgian fruits are also certified or that bike delivery is sometimes handled by people who struggle to find employment.
Their customers really appreciate this. “And that’s a good thing for us,” says Youri, “because we certainly don’t always take the easy route. It’s up to us to make this work, and that’s what we’ve been doing for over 17 years now, all over Belgium.
In collaboration with Prix Juste Producteur
Fruit At Work uses certification to guarantee its customers a fair-trade product. All fruit sourced from the Global South is Fairtrade certified. For Fruit At Work, the key is that farmers receive a fair price and that producers have a say in setting prices.
And they apply this approach to Belgian fruit, which comes directly from producers in Hesbaye. To do so, they partner with the Prix Juste Producteur label. This label monitors the first link in the supply chain. “If you ask a producer whether they receive a fair price, they might be too quick to say ‘yes’ for fear that their harvest won’t be bought. But Prix Juste Producteur actually verifies the accounts. This ensures transparency, including toward customers,” explains Yannick.
Prix Juste Producteur is a Walloon label that is not (yet) very well known in Flanders. Fruit At Work previously helped launch “Boervriendelijk,” a Flemish initiative promoting local fair trade, but unfortunately, it faded away without a trace. Fruit At Work, which is currently the only Flemish company to have joined this initiative, has therefore partnered with Prix Juste Producteur. Yannick hopes, however, that a certification with a Dutch-language name or a Flemish equivalent will emerge one day, as this could convince more Flemish companies and entrepreneurs committed to fair trade to join the effort and thus raise awareness of local fair trade in Flanders.
Conducting our own inspections
When it comes to sustainability guarantees, Fruit At Work doesn’t rely solely on certification. “Because things can go wrong there too,” says Youri, “and we don’t want to hide behind that. We also conduct our own inspections.”
They ask their suppliers for official reports from Global G.A.P. (for companies that supply supermarkets) and GRASP (Global Risk Assessment of Social Practices—a kind of social audit for workers in the workplace), or they contact the supplier directly.
If a client’s way of working doesn’t align with Fruit At Work’s standards and values, they end the partnership. The brothers have the final say and are not accountable to any higher authority or management focused on maximizing profits. “Either we do business sustainably, or we don’t,” says Youri. “Even if the client is satisfied, if we’re not comfortable with it, we end the partnership. This has happened before, even if it hurts us.”
Price and control: two major challenges
To be able to (continue to) operate fairly, price is one of the main challenges to overcome. “If you act fairly, you can’t be the cheapest,” says Yannick. “We sometimes meet large companies that talk endlessly about sustainability. They have a budget large enough to pay everyone fairly, but in the end, they still think we’re too expensive. But we give so much in return, I tell myself: with us, you get fruit that tastes good to both the consumer and the farmer. Everyone in the chain receives a fair price. Managing all of this takes time and energy, and of course, it comes at a cost. Do you expect me to go to the producer and say, ‘It has to be cheaper,’ and squeeze every last drop out of them? No, not because the client can’t afford it—since these are often companies making millions in profits—but simply because they’re not willing to pay the price?”
Furthermore, monitoring also poses a major challenge. The fruit and transport sectors are areas where abuses are commonplace, so Fruit At Work must remain vigilant to ensure everything is done properly.
More ethics, not a priority
According to Yannick, public authorities have an important role to play in the future of fair trade. Indeed, once certain things become mandatory, companies must comply. This has been very clear with the legislative framework regarding corporate due diligence. Companies are then responsible for the entire supply chain, not just the final link. As a company, you must therefore take an interest in working conditions, the origin of raw materials… of all your suppliers.
“This allows us to compete on the right criteria, rather than on factors that shouldn’t even be considered,” he explains. “We’re on the right track in Europe. Things are changing, but a legislative framework can significantly speed up the process—or, unfortunately, slow it down. We’ve seen this with certain directives that were adopted and then scaled back.”
Over his 10 years of experience in the sector, Yannick has seen only limited growth in demand for more ethical and responsible consumption. The younger generation is certainly more open to it, but they rarely hold decision-making positions in large companies. If the CEO of a major company makes truly fair and sustainable choices, it can create a real buzz and inspire others, but in practice, this rarely happens.
He cites the example of bike commuting. “On Mondays, Fruit At Work is the biggest user of bike commuting in Belgium—and we’re just an SME!” Yannick exclaims. “If a multinational company decided tomorrow to cover the last mile by bike, that could tip the scales. So it’s really essential that the leaders of large companies share our mindset. If cities, municipalities, and the political world join us, then we can truly talk about change.”
Yannick notes that we’d especially like to hear that things are gradually improving, but honesty compels him to say that we’re not there yet and that sustainable choices aren’t a priority for most companies. He remains optimistic, however, because the more companies that rally to this cause, the more the fair approach—including in terms of price—will become attractive and able to compete with the unfair approach. But for that to happen, we need scale.
What does the future hold for Fruit At Work?
“I’d love to be able to plan everything perfectly, from A to Z. To be 100% certain that every piece of fruit in the basket has been paid a fair price.” Since this year, Yannick has served on the board of directors of the Belgian Fair Trade Federation to share his knowledge with other players in the fair trade sector.
“I hope we can move toward a situation where customers truly choose us for who we are. That fair trade simply becomes the norm. That it’s no longer even a subject of debate,” concludes Youri.
More info: www.fruitatwork.eu
Photo Copyright: Tim Dirven
* The EU has merged three key sustainability regulations into a single omnibus piece of legislation.
