Peperkoek monopoly

Like the dark rye bread, koek baking eventually moved from the bakery to the factory, and those factories eagerly and greedily bought up all the small koek bakers until only a handful of large koek factories remained. The peperkoek disappeared from our high streets and moved into the more industrial areas. Many koekbakkers disappeared during the Second World War when they were forced to entirely or partly swap their manufacturing to beschuit (rusks). The same happened in Aachen in Germany to the Lebkuchen bakeries. Lokeren in Flanders used to have a koekbakker in the town centre, too, but luckily the actual bakery, De Vreese, still exists out of town in a larger factory still owned by the fifth generation of the De Vreese family. (Although as I am writing this, another peperkoek factory, Vondemolen, has put an offer in to buy De Vreese, which would give it a peperkoek monopoly in Belgium.)