Wasbar takes first steps towards the Netherlands

The restaurant chain Wasbar, which also operates washing machines and dryers, grew to twelve branches in Belgium. Today she is ready for the launch in the Netherlands.

More than ten years after its start-up, Wasbar is crossing the national borders into the Netherlands. “We are ready,” says Johan Luypaert, Wasbar product manager. ‘It is our ambition to open dozens of branches in the coming years, starting in the south of the Netherlands. The search for franchise partners is underway.’

The move abroad comes a few years later than planned, partly due to the pandemic that put a stop to this in recent years.

The concept of Wasbar, a cross between a bar and a laundry room, comes from Dries Henau and Yuri Vandenbogaerde. The two entrepreneurs launched the company in 2013 and received media attention in Flanders thanks to their participation in the VRT program ‘Topstarter’.

They quickly moved on to three locations and then sold their company to Top Brands. It operates the Pizza Hut restaurants and the Paul bakery chain in Belgium and France, and also owns Ellis Gourmet Burger.

It’s been a rough ride for Wasbar since then. Top Brands’ ambition was to quickly roll out the brand in Belgium and beyond. Instead, a number of loss-making locations were first closed and the concept was extensively tinkered with. Wasbar is now primarily a full-fledged restaurant, where you can have breakfast, lunch, coffee and dinner.

‘The bagel burger with fried potato waffles is very popular. They come to us specifically for that. The washing machines are still there and run all day long, but a minority of our customers use them,” says Luypaert. The intention is to copy the concept almost entirely to the Netherlands, although a different emphasis can be placed here and there in the menu.

Wasbar now has twelve branches in our country in Antwerp, Ghent, Brussels, Bruges and Hasselt. The newest business recently opened in Louvain-la-Neuve.