Background · 1 September 2025 · HOP — Hospitality Development Platform
Coffeeshops are hospitality businesses with a special position: tolerated, heavily regulated and at the same time dependent on ordinary business skills — staffing, administration, safety and customer contact.
The Hospitality Development Platform (Horeca Ontwikkel Platform, HOP) focuses on that side: knowledge and development rather than advocacy alone.
Chronology
Background
Where the BCD represents interests and leads the policy debate, the platform focuses on the business-level professionalisation of participating companies.
In practice
Think of knowledge-sharing on staff policy, administration, safety and dealing with regulators — precisely the topics on which municipalities expect a professional counterpart.
Case law and legal framework
BCD publication on HOP
Background and role of the platform
The platform is a development track alongside advocacy, not a replacement for it.
Why professionalisation touches the policy debate
Every conversation with a municipality ultimately comes down to trust. Demonstrable professionalisation — training, procedures, certification — changes the tone of that conversation from suspicion to cooperation.
Our conclusion
Our conclusion is that professionalisation is the strongest form of advocacy: it makes the sector explicable.