Rise and shine! I had to wake up extra early to pack my duffel bag for our overnight trip to Rotterdam. I made the brilliant decision of depriving myself of sleep once again and it obviously came to haunt me as the day went on. Anyways, this day started off when a random person thought the train tracks were a sidewalk and cancelled the train’s departure altogether. Instead, we had to take another train that was not leaving for quite a while, and it completely set back the timeline already.

The train ride itself was fine, but I kept waking myself up snoring which was extremely unpleasant. Upon arrival, I was ready to knock, but the Floating Farm was calling my name. The farm was incredibly cool visually as we walked in, but the cow waste was abysmal. Minke van Wingerden gave us a very interesting presentation about the farm’s history, objectives, and business model. One thing in particular that caught my attention was how they fed the cows, specifically how they took grass from De Kuip, the home ground of Feyenoord (the biggest football club in Rotterdam who absolutely despises Ajax), and gave it to the cows. At the time of the presentation, I never thought of this question, but I was wondering if the Floating Farm has been/thought of collaborating with Feyenoord directly in terms of marketing to help bolster their company objectives, in addition to their usage of the stadium’s grass. Considering the club is easily one of the biggest brands in Rotterdam and the Netherlands, in addition to a solid reputation continentally, I believe that a sponsorship with them would greatly benefit the company and expand their market and message to another audience. As the Floating Farm sells their products to other stores, in addition to their own store they opened during COVID, a marketing collaboration would likely boost their overall sales + production greatly, and make their message on sustainability more widespread. From there, they could be able to greatly expand their concepts and deliver consumer needs on a larger scale to a larger audience.

After our visit, which was concluded with non-alcoholic shots of milk and taste testing (more) cheese, we walked around the city, where I (reluctantly) snagged a shirt from the Feyenoord fan shop nearby as a token of my appearance here. Ironically, I walked in the store with a nearly full Ajax outfit and I was quite scared considering the very deep history between clubs and fanbases (sidebar: sometimes violent to the point where away fans were banned altogether from fixtures between the clubs). Nonetheless, we survived and finished the day with a canal cruise down the water and a Turkish delight dinner that was simply amazing. Unfortunately, my phone died at this point and could not capture the feast we had, but trust my word on this one.

That concludes our first (and only) night in wonderful Rotterdam! See you guys tomorrow.