Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
Vegan Lunch Date: Vegan Lunch Date is Munich's—and, as far as we know, Germany's—first delivery service for vegan lunchboxes. We deliver food that makes you happy because it's healthy, climate-friendly, and delicious.
We know from our own experience that good nutrition often falls by the wayside in the stressful everyday working life (even when working from home). We want to change that: Since March 1, hungry customers can have a freshly prepared, healthy lunch delivered to their office or home. Our daily lunch combo is offered Monday through Friday in a reusable box and delivered by bicycle in a climate-friendly manner. The ingredients used are 100 percent plant-based and predominantly regional and seasonal, with the majority even organic.
Expansion into other cities is planned
After our first three successful weeks of pop-up, we are overwhelmed by the overwhelmingly positive feedback. We are highly motivated to continue and aim to establish ourselves long-term. We currently serve downtown Munich, and future expansion to other cities is not only conceivable but part of our long-term plan.
Marion Obermaier (45) is the originator, initiator, and founder of Vegan Lunch Date. As a brand strategist and communications consultant, she has over 20 years of experience supporting both established brands and young startups. With Vegan Lunch Date, she is now building her own brand. She discovered the vegan diet several years ago and now wants to inspire as many people as possible to embrace it. She currently serves as owner, managing director, kitchen assistant, bicycle courier, webmaster, and press officer.
Her second colleague, Martina Brunner (40), a fashion designer and business graduate, has been meat-free since childhood and discovered plant-based nutrition through her own health concerns. Sharing knowledge about nutrients and their positive effects with others is a matter close to her heart, which is why she was immediately enthusiastic about the idea of a healthy lunch break. As an e-commerce specialist, she oversees the startup's digital affairs and manages Vegan Lunch Date's Instagram presence. Martina and Marion have known each other for a long time.
In their search for professional kitchen support, the two found Tereza Pavoukova (33) through the proverbial three corners and were able to recruit her as head chef and co-founder. She is largely vegan herself and has acquired her professional skills exclusively in vegetarian-vegan kitchens (which is about as rare among chefs as a winged unicorn). Among other things, she has cooked at Tian, Munich's only meat-free Michelin-starred restaurant, and managed the patisserie at the vegetarian-vegan "Hotel Weißensee" in Austria.
Isabel Süß (44, unfortunately not yet in the team photo) recently joined the founding team. A former colleague of Marion's from her time at the agency, she is an experienced commercial manager with a firm grasp of financial, HR, and tax issues, as well as ordering and payment processes. It currently serves as a personalized booking and CRM system until a viable digital solution is found (we're working hard on it; any good suggestions are always welcome!).
The goal of the four founders is to provide as many people as possible with a healthy and delicious lunch break. A clear conscience included.
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Vegan Lunch Date: When it comes to lunch breaks in German offices, there's often a huge gap between the desired (healthy, balanced, tasty, uncomplicated) and the reality (too much, too sweet, too salty, too fatty, lacking in nutrients, mediocre in taste, and time-consuming to obtain). From our own experience, we know how often people listlessly chomp down on a boring bakery roll in front of a screen instead of treating themselves to a truly refreshing and healthy lunch. Even the canteen food offered—if available—usually only inadequately satisfies the desire for light and vitamin-rich food. And even when working from home, there's rarely enough time (and motivation) to mindfully prepare delicious meals. We can help!
Non-vegans can also order food
Vegan Lunch Date offers a new lunch combination every day and delivers it directly to wherever it's needed: the office, the home office, the construction site, or the yoga studio. We carefully select the best seasonal and regional ingredients and put our utmost care and love into their preparation. For our feel-good meal, we use only plant-based ingredients for a lunch that's healthier and produces less CO2 than conventional mixed meals. Of course, you don't have to be vegan to enjoy it.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Vegan Lunch Date: There are indeed many delivery services, but the selection of healthy, fresh, and varied options is truly limited, if not nonexistent, even in the big city of Munich. Those who want to eat healthy for lunch either choose between a salad (boring) and—at least—a bowl (but boring after the third time). Or they prepare something themselves and pack a healthy lunch. But who can manage that every day?
The numerous feedbacks prove us right: a delivery service for varied, healthy and, above all, incredibly delicious lunches was definitely missing!
Too little time
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Vegan Lunch Date: The three biggest challenges are too little time, too little time and too little time.
Furthermore, the first major challenge was finding a professional to manage the kitchen. Chefs with significant vegan experience are rare, and the person should also share our philosophy of healthy cooking. Luckily, we found the perfect person in Tereza! Anyone who has ever tried one of her lunch combinations will agree.
Also, we haven't found a satisfactory technical solution for our order management yet, and the search continues. We appreciate any helpful suggestions (and no, Shopify doesn't provide what we need).
Munich Startup: How are things going?
Vegan Lunch Date: We don't want to share any numbers yet, but we can say that we were quickly overwhelmed by the number of requests. We had set a target number of lunch boxes per day for the pop-up phase and sold 40–50 percent more by the second week. This was also a capacity challenge, but one we gladly accepted. Now we need to maintain and expand this level and increase our resources accordingly.
Munich Startup: How do you rate Munich as a startup location?
Vegan Lunch Date: Since our company is not operating in one of the current flagship industries, we do not notice much of the general mood for startups and the conditions for them in Munich.
Still room for improvement
Especially for our offering (plant-based food), there's still a lot of room for improvement in Munich. For a city of millions, the selection of vegan dishes and innovative food concepts is surprisingly meager. But fortunately, that's changing, even if many new concepts haven't (yet) really taken off due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Munich Startup: Cook yourself or have it delivered?
Vegan Lunch Date: Always the team cooking. Until the day we started a vegan lunch delivery service. Now, at the end of a long week in the kitchen, we sometimes don't feel like cooking at home. So we order vegan pizza, which luckily has recently become available in Munich, and it's absolutely delicious.
