Startercultures.eu was founded in 2018 by Dutch foodwriter ‘Meneer Wateetons’.

At that time he had authored several books on sausage making and fermentation. One of the most frequently asked question he got from readers was: “Love the books, but where can I find those starter cultures needed for making dry cured sausages/tempeh/miso etc”. After having pointed his readers to their butcher, or shops in Japan, China or Indonesia with crazy shipping times and costs for years, he decided to start offering these products himself.

A webshop was born.

The store started in Dutch, selling only meat cultures, curing salts and casings, but quickly expanded to other types of fermentation, as well as offering these in English and recently, in German. Currently, startercultures.eu offers around 200 fermentation related products.

Customer support

Fermentation isn’t always easy. In fact, working with invisible microbes can be pretty challenging. Luckily, we don’t just sell startercultures and other ingredients, we actually use ourselves and – having published extensively about them – know quite a bit about how to use them and their pitfalls.

So, we understand you have questions and customer support is important to us. Feel free to use our chat function to ask all your questions. If we don’t respond immediately (we’re a small team), we will get back to you by email. We speak English and Dutch.

The team

Startercultures.eu is still run by Meneer Wateetons, but he is assisted by Joost (customer service and general store management), Arianne (sales, finance), freelancers Luuk (all things technical) and Martijn (SEO). Storage, order picking and shipping is done by the team of PostNL E-comm services and packing and labeling by our friends at ProVerpakken.

Meneer Wateetons

Founder, head fermentation guru

Not his real name. ‘Meneer Wateetons’ literally means ‘mister what eats us’. Long story, don’t ask.

Founder of startercultures.eu, scientist, cook and author of nine cookbooks about fermentation, sausage and charcuterie making, smoking, alcohol making and deep frying.

Favorite type of fermentation: miso.

Arianne Streefkerk

Advertising, sales

Arianne is responsible for advertising and all things that have to do with money. She loves traveling, particularly ‘vanlife’ and cooking.

As Dimayin she offers Facebook and Instagram advertising services as well as coaching.

She’s also madly in love with meneer. And he with her.

Favorite type of fermentation: Tokaj wines (double fermented!)

Joost

Customer support, backend

You’ll find Joost in the chat, and answering most of your emails pertaining to your order. Once a famous jockey, until a heavy fall during a concours in Normandy forced him to choose a different career.  Of Dutch origin, but currently resides in sunny Brazil.

Joost is interested in simple fermentations and sausages, especially when paired well with Churrasco. Loves spectacular bratwurst and hot sauce, sourced with local ingredients.

Luuk

All things technical

Luuk, as a permanent freelancer associated with startercultures.eu solves all technical problems. Conflicting plugins, custom programming, Luuk takes care of it.

Luuk can be found at https://luukthe.dev/

He gets out from behind his laptop to travel, exercise (triathlons), and eat cheese.

Favorite type of fermentation: cheese. All kinds of cheese.