Eating at home and in the office: salad is the new fast food

Pottsalat GmbH, which Pia Gerigk, Alexandra Künne and Ben Küstner founded in Essen in 2017, supplies salads and bowls.

“In contrast to salads, bowls are characterized by a base such as rice, quinoa, noodles or cauliflower rice,” explains Küstner.

They have a branch in Essen and one in Dortmund.

They got the business idea when they noticed how difficult it is to eat healthily in the workplace.

At the time of its inception, food delivery was just gaining momentum.

They decided on a "lean start-up", a concept from Silicon Valley. “Instead of investing a lot of time and money in the pre-development of a product, which in the end no one might want, you try to answer the central basic question as quickly and cheaply as possible with a 'minimally executable product' that is not yet perfect in detail , on which a business idea is based, ”explains Küstner. Your question was whether people want to order salads online. The answer was quickly clear: "We were sold out just two hours after our website was founded."

Funders were brought on board.

In the spring of this year it was announced that Dirk Schneider and Hans Christian Limmer had acquired 30 percent of pot lettuce for almost 2 million euros.

The two founded the bakery chain Backwerk and are shareholders of the burger restaurant chain Hans im Glück.

Pot lettuce now employs 170 people.

More small deliveries

Customers prefer to put their own dishes together on the website, says Küstner.

The conversation rate, the ratio of people who buy to the number of visitors to the website, is over 20 percent.

That is significantly more than the average value of classic e-commerce models.

"We can perfect our online shop purely on our salads and bowls, while Lieferando has to build the best possible for all possible concepts," says Küstner.

“Since the first lockdown in March 2020, the large office orders for 10 to 20 salads have dropped suddenly.

Now there are more small orders coming home, ”reports Küstner.

The average value of a delivery in 2020 was around 30 euros.

On average, a dish costs 10.20 euros.

Sales in January amounted to 340,000 euros;

Last year it doubled to 2.5 million euros compared to the previous year.

“Falafel, jackfruit, tofu and a meat substitute made from pea protein are currently very popular,” says Küstner.

The bowls have names like "Dieter Bowlen" and "Costa Bowladis".

The music of Costa Cordalis "runs up and down here", says Küstner.

Marketing is a battle for attention.

Bowls made from bagasse

Salatkind GmbH from Ingolstadt uses a similar concept. Marcel Hagmann founded the company in 2009. With Jörg Pfeiffer, the other managing director, he decided to open a third branch in Cologne after the two branches in Ingolstadt. They offer break bowls, the smaller version of the normal bowl, baked potatoes called “Feldhelden”, and salads, which cost around 7 euros on average. The vegan bestseller is called "Plant Power". “Our main focus is on corporate customers,” says Nadine Hagmann, managing director in Cologne, where they are based in the industrial park.

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a drop in sales because of the home office.

But the delivery service was expanded to include private households and the decline was "roughly" absorbed.

According to Marcel Hagmann, sales in all branches last year amounted to 2 million euros.

They employ 32 people and have sold around 30,000 products in 2020.

The annual growth is 15 to 20 percent.

Salatkind uses trendy ingredients such as sea asparagus, honey pulled chicken and oven-roasted balsamic sprouts.

You know that the to-go concept creates a lot of plastic waste, says Nadine Hagmann.

So they switched the salad bowls to bagasse, a by-product of sugar cane production.

Some customers used the bowls several times by arrangement.

You wash them off and Salatkind disinfects them.

The eye eats too

The nutrient-rich GmbH was founded in 2018 by managing director Florian Klar.

Two branches in Bochum sell bowls, smoothies and sandwiches and also offer deliveries.

Klar had previously founded an online shop for chia seeds, hemp seeds and magma powder with a friend.

Healthy nutrition is usually not marketed positively, he says.

They call their food "superfood".

There are 30 products in the range, the bowls are the most popular.

“As soon as a dish is served in a bowl, it can be called a bowl.” According to Klars, avocado, edamame, sweet potato spirals, wild herb salad and cauliflower rice are currently in vogue.

In 2020 they achieved a turnover of 500,000 euros, 15 percent more than in 2019. The company employs 30 people.

Aesthetics are very important.

"We have followed the changes on social media platforms such as Instagram and are of the opinion that the eye eats too and that good-looking food goes down well with customers," reports Klar.

The core target group are 18 to 40 year olds.

They also supply the first team of the Vfl Bochum football club.

The article comes from the school project “Youth and Economy”, which the FAZ organizes together with the Association of German Banks.