De Groene Passage

Since 1997, the former Stam Wonen furniture store at Mariniersweg 9 in Rotterdam’s Stadsdriehoek has housed De Groene Passage, a shopping centre in Rotterdam where seven businesses share one roof: an organic supermarket, an organic butcher, a vegetarian buffet restaurant, a course centre, a home store, a Wereldwinkel and a beauty salon. The 2,500 square metres are a few minutes’ walk from Blaak station and the Markthal. Behind the concept is a family. Frans Saat and Marja Verroen opened supermarket Gimsel on the Botersloot in 1988. Their daughter Roosmarijn Saat now co-owns Gimsel, Spirit and Gimsel Academy and chairs De Groene Passage, while her brother Daniël is the driving force behind Spirit.

The idea for a shopping centre built around organic food and fair trade came up in 1993, during Gimsel’s fifth anniversary. A first building, an empty savings bank across the street, turned out to be too expensive for the thirty or so interested entrepreneurs. They dropped the building but kept the plan. When Stam Wonen left the Mariniersweg, nine businesses signed up, and Gimsel went from 120 to 600 square metres in one move. Since then a bookshop has come and gone, Spirit has been rebuilt to three times its size, and in 2014 the passage received the title Fairtrade Winkelcentrum. Two details are easy to miss: the artwork Boom met warme hand by Hans Lemmen, placed in 2001, and the World Peace Flame, which has had a permanent home here since 2013.

Gimsel sells organic food, wine, beer and natural cosmetics, and its drugstore department was named the most inspiring organic drugstore in the Netherlands in 2020. Next door, De Groene Weg is an organic butcher that makes its own sausages. Van Binnen has been run since late 2021 by Anne-Mieke van der Klift, who worked in the shop for more than twelve years before taking it over, and sells home textiles, furnishings and gifts. At the Wereldwinkel, volunteers sell Fairtrade products from small producers. Brands you can find in the passage include Yumeko bed linen, Texeler wool, Dr. Bronner’s soaps, Studio ROOF and scarves by Sjaal met Verhaal. Schoonheidssalon Aditi has been here since 2001, and Gimsel Academy runs cooking classes and courses. Hungry after shopping? At Spirit, an organic and vegetarian buffet restaurant, you fill your own plate and pay by weight at the till.

Looking for organic groceries, Fairtrade gifts and a vegetarian lunch in Rotterdam in a single stop? That is the whole point of De Groene Passage: you can do your weekly shop, buy a present and sit down for lunch without leaving the building. Every year there is a spring market on Saturdays in May and June and a Christmas market, with stalls from all the shops, and the exhibition space shows work by artists that you can also buy. The passage is easy to combine with a visit to the Markthal, the Cube Houses or the Laurenskerk nearby. Each shop keeps its own hours, so check before you go. Opening hours are listed on this page.