Cheese & Frank
Hi Frank , please introduce yourself!
Hello, My name is Frank, I am 31 years old and born in the Zeeland town of 's-Gravenpolder. I come from a huge family consisting of father, mother, 8 brothers and 7 sisters. In 2013, I met my partner with whom I have been happily dating for 11 years now. Together with my partner, I live in burgundy Maastricht where we have a nice flat together and would eventually like to buy a nice house.
What education did you do?
After secondary school, I trained in Retail Management where I was able to learn a lot about dealing with customers, managing shop teams and managing results. I was born into a real entrepreneurial family with its own fresh produce shop and clothing shop. Several brothers also own their own businesses. So from a young age, I have been involved in retailing.
How has your career progressed so far?
After completing my education, I started in fashion, then worked for Dyson for a few years, and finally ended up in the beautiful shop on Kleine staat in Maastricht. Large posters in the windows caught my attention. Surely a cheese gift shop sounded very appealing.
Since the opening of our beautiful Cheese & More by Henri Willig shop in Maastricht, I have been Retail Store Manager since 2018. Here, I trained a completely new team and we currently have a wonderful permanent team in our shop. After all these years, I still work for our family business Henri Willig with great pleasure. The very small shop in Maastricht has experienced tremendous growth over the years. There have been huge challenges such as the Corona epidemic in which visitor numbers dropped tremendously. Yet we managed to pull through this as a company, shop and team. Visitors are starting to come again and also know how to find the shop well.
What does working at Henri Willig mean to you?
I think the great thing about working at Henri Willig is that no day is the same. Every day is a new day with new challenges. Supervising the shop team, making the optimal planning, presenting our new products, because Henri Willig does not stand still.
There is constant change in the range including with the new seasonal cheeses or limited editions. There is also a lot of challenge that can be found outside the shop such as participating in various events like the fair, assortment evaluations etc.
Henri Willig also invests well in staff development. For instance, there are various training courses that can be followed. When I joined the company in 2018, I started the store managers training. This training helped me develop myself further in my role as store manager at Henri Willig.
How do you see the future?
For the future, I hugely hope that the Maastricht shop can continue to grow. Thinking about expanding the current premises, possibly a second location or optimising the current shop. I also hope to be able to develop myself further in my position. Currently, I am already supervising several shops without a store manager and developing their teams in their work. Perhaps the next step is to get some permanent shops under my supervision to help develop here too.
