Hi there,
I’m Joost, together with Marike van Beurden, we founded Be Better My Friend.
It all started end of 2019. Marike van Beurden approached me in my role of global director of Cacao Barry. She asked if I could help fund her pastry book. Aware of her skills, I said yes, but on two conditions. One that it must be about plant-based pastry. And two, to involve food science. We wanted it to be more than a recipe book of plant-based recipes. We wanted it to educate chefs across the world on how it is different to bake with plant-based vs animal-based fat
Soon after Marike started, we hit a wall. There wasn’t a vegan butter that worked well for bakers and pastry. Not in terms of structure, taste, workability or clean ingredients. And at the same time, things were shifting: more and more people were looking for alternatives. Not just vegans — people with allergies, people avoiding dairy or cholesterol. And as well there was the growing urgency to reduce carbon.
And then Covid hit the market.
At that time I had left Barry Callebaut to become a food / brand consultant. With Covid disrupting our lives, we both suddenly had lots of time and no work. That’s when we thought: maybe someone should build a better butter. And Be Better My Friend was born. We spent one-and-a-half years developing a plant-based butter alternative for professional baking. Not in a lab, but in real pastry kitchens. We worked with chefs, food scientists, labs, and our production partner. It had to perform like butter. It had to be stable. It had to be clean. And it had to make sense — for the environment, for health, and for dietary needs.
Here’s what we focused on:
Plant-based – Not for the label, but because the world is changing. Consumers are changing. If you want to keep your bakery and pastry business future-proof, you need options.
Workability – Our plant-butter had to roll, whip, laminate, and bake like cow-butter. No compromises.
Clean & allergen-friendly – No allergens. No palm. No additives. No hydrogenated fats. No gmo. Just a short list of ingredients you can explain.
Stable & consistent – Chefs need reliability. Our plant-butter delivers the same result.
Neutral in taste – We didn’t want to copy cow-butter’s flavour. Our plant-butter is a carrier, not the star. It lets your ingredients do the talking.
Be Better My Friend is not here to tell you what to use and what not to use. Be Better is here to give you an extra tool to help you strengthen and grow your business. Because sometimes cow-butter just doesn’t make sense — and when that moment comes, Be Better is here to help.
I’ll be writing more about our business, what we’re seeing in the market, the challenges we come across, and the people we work with. And I’d love to hear from you too — what are your customers asking for? What’s shifting in your kitchen?
Happy to help where I can.
