From the dunes to the digital menu: how The Spot keeps Zandvoort sharp
Zandvoort · Beach club
On a spring-like Monday in March we visit The Spot on the beach of Zandvoort, right next to the circuit. It's a beach club, but above all the place for kitesurfers, surfers and stand-up paddleboarders. Somewhere you can order lunch, dinner or coffee, and just as easily rent a wetsuit.
“Seeing food makes you want to eat, so we spend a lot of time each season on the photos of our dishes in the app.”
When we arrive, The Spot has just been fully rebuilt. The summer season runs to October 1st, after which the entire pavilion is taken down and stored. From February 1st, after a well-earned break, the rebuild starts again, which takes about a month. It's something of a small wonder that just three days after opening, no trace remains of the fact that everything has only just been put back together. "It's a tough job every time," says manager Menne Bartlema, "and certainly not an automatic process."
Given its unique location on the beach of Zandvoort it made sense for The Spot to extend into hospitality. Because the beach is either feast or famine, and because rostering the team is very hard, they chose Butlaroo to be able to serve guests at full speed in good weather.
Where The Spot puts so much weight on The Beach Lifestyle (combining sport, health and sustainability), that shows in how the business is run. They excel at it: in 2021 The Spot won the Falco Eleonara Award for the most sustainable F and B concept, and was named the best Plastic Free Terrace in the Netherlands. Replacing a physical menu with a digital one feeds into that. "On the beach especially, paper menus blow away and are never error-free or complete. So we deliberately use a digital menu we can adjust at any moment of the day to suit us."
Look at that digital menu and one thing jumps out immediately: the dish photography is genuinely beautiful. It can make you hungry, especially after a few hours of active sport in or by the water. "Seeing food makes you want to eat," Menne says, "so each season we spend a lot of time on the dish photos in the app."
The upshot is clear: for a day of watersports followed by a meal and a drink, The Spot is the place you want to be.