Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Felix Munte, co-founder and CEO of Foodji: There is a serious food gap in Germany: An estimated nine out of ten companies with more than 30 employees do not offer their teams any catering options at the workplace – this affects around 100,000 companies. Shift and night workers in particular find it difficult to get healthy food at work. Healthy nutrition plays a key role in well-being, motivation, and employee retention. We have developed an intelligent food vending machine that uses a proprietary technology platform to deliver fresh, nutritious meals directly to the workplace – 24/7. This means that all employees in companies of all sizes can enjoy healthy meals on-site and benefit from more relaxation during breaks.
Solution for companies with 30 or more employees
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Felix MunteThe concept of providing fresh salads and wholesome meals around the clock, fully automated, is new in our working world. The most well-known solution for corporate catering remains the canteen. However, small and medium-sized companies in particular often cannot or do not want to afford these, as they only become profitable above a certain number of guests. Foodji In contrast, this is suitable for companies with 30 or more employees – and is many times more affordable than a staff-operated bistro. This allows companies to maintain high standards in employee catering at a fraction of the cost.
Also new is how we use AI: We developed the software underlying Foodji ourselves. AI predicts demand at each location, optimizes logistics, and ensures the right meals are available at the right time in the right place. Through this demand-based quantity planning, we reduce food waste to a minimum.
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Felix Munte: My co-founder Daniel and I used to work in management consulting. It can get quite late in the evenings. Back then, we were often faced with the question: Where can we get something to eat? Unfortunately, offices often only had the typical snack vending machines with drinks and sweets. Back then, we asked ourselves: How can we actually convert a vending machine so that it can also offer fresh food? And so the idea for Foodji was born. We gained expertise in the areas of food, IT, and machine learning through Nicolas, Moritz and Oliver on board – and finally founded the company in 2016. We have been operating since 2019/20. Since then, we have grown continuously and have almost quadrupled our sales in the past two years.
Company catering has a positive effect on employee retention
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Felix Munte: Probably our biggest challenge is raising market awareness and breaking down barriers – we still have a lot of educational work to do here, especially in Germany. Would you associate fresh salads with vending machine food, for example? Probably not. But these are precisely the kinds of meals we offer with the Foodji – made possible thanks in part to our cook-and-chill process, high-quality ingredients, and collaboration with regional partners, and in part to our technology platform and seamlessly coordinated supply chain processes, which we continuously optimize.
Many companies are also unaware of the costs associated with a lack of in-house catering – from the direct loss of time due to food procurement, but also from indirect costs: Healthy company catering has a positive effect on employee retention, and when this is strong, it leads to up to 50 percent less fluctuation, 78 percent fewer absences, and up to 17 percent higher productivity. This has a Meta-study by Gallup last year. A dismissal, however, costs the employer up to 150 percent of the gross annual salary. It is therefore worthwhile to invest in company catering.
Another challenge: Our original go-to-market strategy was focused on small and medium-sized businesses. We're now seeing increasing numbers of inquiries from large companies, for example, where Foodji is complementing an existing canteen. To meet this demand, we're adapting our sales structures accordingly. We see this as a great opportunity and are learning new things every day.
Our vision is to make healthy food the standard in every workplace
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Felix Munte: Our vision is to make healthy food the norm in every workplace – in companies of all sizes. To achieve this, we are pursuing ambitious growth targets and aim to reach a four-digit number of Foodji locations. At the beginning of the year, we expanded our availability to additional cities, with more to follow throughout the year. We also want to expand our presence in larger companies – whether as a useful addition to the canteen or as an alternative to it, especially in view of the many canteen closures that we are constantly reading about. In all of this, we want to continue to prioritize sustainability by collaborating with regional partners in food preparation, offering vegetarian and vegan alternatives, and minimizing food waste through needs-based quantity planning. In five years, we want to further expand our position as market leader and have closed as many supply gaps as possible in the over 100,000 companies with more than 30 employees. We then want to supply these companies from our central logistics location.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Felix Munte: For us, Munich reflects, in a way, the challenges of the entire German startup ecosystem. On the one hand, we value the high quality of life and the dense network in the city, also with regard to the many accelerators and incubators located here – e.g., the TU's startup center, UnternehmerTUM. We find truly top talent here, even if the competition is correspondingly tough. On the other hand, in Munich – as throughout Germany – we encounter unnecessary hurdles and bureaucracy that further complicate the everyday life of founders. Overall, the location has shown us that, above all, a fundamental, system-wide improvement is needed to give innovative companies the necessary freedom.
Munich Startup: Risk or security?
Felix Munte: We don't see risk and security as opposites, but as two sides of the same coin. As founders, we must have the courage to take calculated risks; otherwise, we can't build a company from the ground up. At the same time, this doesn't mean acting rashly. We approach risks strategically, with a clear focus and a long-term vision to build a stable and healthy company. It's about finding the balance: living the urge for innovation without losing sight of the necessary security aspects.
