♥ Goodwill

Aside from our PANCAKES-blue heart, we also have a heart made of gold. We are convinced that you get back what you give, which is deeply engraved in our minds and hearts. It is so important to us that we made it part of our core ingredients. 
 
The hospitality industry is known as the living room of society, a place where people meet, create happy memories and share ups and downs of life. To summarize it is a warm and welcoming place where everyone is welcome! Amsterdam as a city is doing so much for us, and we are more than happy to return that favour. And we are not sticking to baking yummy pancakes and poffertjes, we also support our lovely hometown and her citizens.  
 
For example, every festive season we host Christmas dinner for lonesome seniors. It started “small” with a dinner for 80 senior citizens at our Westermarkt location and grew to a dinner in two of our location; Zuidas and Westermarkt. We are well aware that it might not go through this year, due to COVID. But that won’t stop us! If they can’t come to dinner, we’ll make sure dinner will come to their doorstep. This will ensure that no one is alone during this festive season. 
 
Another thing that is near and dear to our heart is to minimize food waste. We make sure all our ingredients are local and sustainable, and when we order those, we make sure to pay attention to the quantities. By being aware how much we order we rarely have too much and we won’t throw out the surplus. Even in scenarios we had to close unexpectedly, we made sure our ingredients would be put to good use. In our case we bring them to the Regenboog foundation or the Buurtbuik, where we bake delicious pancakes with lots of love for the people who need it the most. 
 
But it doesn’t end there! Besides caring for Amsterdam’s citizens, it is important to sponsor local cultural initiatives. Take for example the Red Light Jazz-festival, which shows the Red Light District in a completely new perspective! Or the Canal festival, which gives a platform to young (and undiscovered) talent, with the best backdrop of all; the scenic canals of Amsterdam! We even had the honour of hosting a breakfast session at our restaurant Aan ‘t IJ. Because what is more fun than enjoying good music, performances and good vibes on and around the stunning canals of Amsterdam?  
 
Not to forget about theatre Carré, a true icon in the city. It is a place where the young, old, poor or rich come together to enjoy an array of performances. Whether you like circus or opera or prefer comedy or a play, Carré has it all. That is why we like to support the Theater Carré fund, which is used for the building and all the shows they offer. In addition to the fund, we also made a donation to help with the renovation of the artist’s dressing rooms. It’s a place where everyone comes together, open to all, something that is right up our alley! 
 
But we are not just treating “our” Amsterdam right, we also make sure we take care of people on a grander scale. As you may know, we ask you to pay €0,50 to use the bathrooms. Not something we were super excited about from the start, but we were pressured to do because of the never-ending queues for the bathrooms. The solution was a paid toilet, but we couldn’t install that without a PANCAKES-twist. We turned a negative into a positive and connected with Jolien from Unicef and founded the Business Buddie project! This will help us to ensure that all the proceeds will go to Unicef’s WASH project. This project has the ultimate goal of making sure everyone is able to access clean water, sanitation and hygiene. 
A cause that is super important to us and one we are more than happy to support. 
 
We do more than just making donations to improve “our” city. We are also members of local entrepreneurship-associations of the area’s we have our restaurants. This enables us to be an active member of the local society, and help solving problems or to come up with ideas to make Amsterdam even MORE beautiful.