Today we’d like to introduce you to Chantal Piet.
Hi Chantal , so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Two Dutch people, the Green Card lottery, one suitcase and a stroopwafel iron. That’s how Stroop Club started. I moved to the U.S. from Rotterdam in 2015 with my business partner Tako, without a network, no job and no plan beyond the fact that I couldn’t imagine giving up the one Dutch tradition I actually missed. I started baking stroopwafels on the Austin local Farmers Markets and it turned out sharing a caramel waffle cookie is a fast way to turn a stranger into a friend in a country where you don’t know a single person yet.
That accidental icebreaker became a business. Ten years later, Stroop Club is a certified women-owned company built entirely around one product, organic and plant-based, sold in retail across the U.S. and growing in Canada and the UK, run remotely by a team of two. No investors, no rushed growth, just steady and sustainable, the same way we make the wafels.
Somewhere in there I also became a dive instructor and fell hard for the ocean, which is how I ended up living on Roatan, Honduras, for the past four years. Being on the reef daily and watching it disappear is what led me to found Caribbean Reef Guardians, a nonprofit working to restore the coral reefs here.
Stroop Club funds part of that work directly, 1% of revenue straight to the reef.
One company sells cookies so the other one can help save coral, and to me that’s really one project with two names.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not smooth, no. Stroop Club grew without investors and without a big team, which sounds nice in hindsight but meant every hard problem got solved by two people instead of a department. No ad budget on Amazon, no rushed expansion into new products, no cash cushion for a bad month. No marketing or ad funds… Slow growth by choice, but slow growth still comes with real pressure when it’s your name on the business and it’s profits funding your own life.
The bigger struggle has been building a house on Roatan while running both companies. I’d never built a house before, let alone in Honduras, and doing it as a foreign woman in a culture that still runs on very traditional gender lines meant getting taken seriously by contractors and permit offices took real work, not just money.
Caribbean Reef Guardians is the harder road of the two. It runs on donations, education fees, and coral adoptions, and there’s never quite enough of any of it to match what the reef actually needs. The honest obstacle isn’t the science or the will to do the work, it’s resources: not enough money, not enough time to raise the money, and permits and political relationships that take years to build with local and national authorities.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Stroop Club makes one product: the Dutch stroopwafel, done properly and made better for the planet than the original recipe ever was. USDA Organic, plant-based, RSPO certified, with a gluten-free version made to the same standard.
No animal testing, ever. We’re a certified women-owned business, run remotely by a team of two, and we’ve grown it year after year without outside investors or loans. In 2023 and 2025 we won the Plant Based Taste Award, which felt like proof that staying disciplined about one product instead of chasing a bigger lineup was the right call.
What sets us apart is that focus. Most stroopwafel brands here reformulate the Dutch original around dairy and eggs, or they expand into other snacks and the wafel becomes an afterthought. We went the other direction: one product, taken as far as it can go in sustainability on ingredients, sourcing, and packaging. That’s post-consumer recycled cardboard, backyard-compostable cellophane, organic ingredients sourced from companies that actually pay their staff fairly.
The part I’m proudest of, brand-wise: Stroop Club is a member of 1% for the Planet, and 1% of our revenue funds Caribbean Reef Guardians, a coral reef restoration nonprofit I founded myself in Roatan, Honduras. CRG runs in-situ coral nurseries, education programs for local kids, tourists, and dive professionals, and is building a coral genetics biobank right now.
Buying a stroopwafel funds real, on-the-ground reef work, it truly isn’t just a donation button to buy off our conscience.
What I want readers to take away is that this isn’t two separate stories stitched together for a good headline. It’s one set of values in kindness, sustainability and sharing, applied to a cookie business and a conservation nonprofit at the same time. One funds the other, and both exist because I can’t leave either one alone.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
What matters most is protecting what can’t protect itself and for me that’s very specific: the reef outside my front door on Roatan. I’ve spent years diving it and watching it decline, and that’s the actual reason Caribbean Reef Guardians exists, the reason Stroop Club funds it, and the reason a decade of my life has gone into building both companies around that one goal.
The “why” comes back to something more personal: I need the freedom to decide how I spend my time and what I put it toward, and I’ve built my whole life around protecting that. Fighting for the reef is the same instinct pointed outward. Coral can’t move, can’t speak up for itself, and won’t get a future unless people who can act actually do. It’s necessary for the future of our coastal environments, food supply and food security for millions and simply the beauty of the eco systems and their biodiversity.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.stroopclub.com
- Instagram: @stroopcub
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stroopclub
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stroopclub
- Other: https://www.caribbeanreefguardians.com
