The Food start-up scene in the metropolitan area of Munich
- 14.09.2022
- English Articles
- Julian Dei
- Kerstin Dressel
- Peter Eisner
- Jutta Roosen
- Hans Hauner
Peer reviewed / Manuscript (original) submitted: 08. December 2021 / Revision accepted: 31. March 2022
A comparison between 2020 and 2017
Introduction
With more than 618,000 employees in over 6,100 companies, the food industry is one of the most important economic sectors in Germany [1]. Consumers in Germany can choose from around 170,000 different food products [2]. A rapidly growing number of these products are now being brought to market by food start-ups. Some new companies have already managed to establish themselves on the market and serve as role models for founders. However, it is largely unknown how many start-ups exist in the food sector as a whole and which product categories are particularly trendy among them at the moment. In particular, scientific studies on food start-ups have been hard to find.
A first food start-up analysis in the Munich region was conducted in 2017 by the competence cluster of nutrition research enable with funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research [3]. At that time, 51 new food start-ups were identified in the greater Munich area, which were founded in the period 2014–2016. It was noticed that mainly new nutrition trends were taken up and about 90% of the companies made health-related advertising claims for their products or services [3].
The aim of the current study was to determine how many of the start-ups at that time were able to develop stable business models by 2020 and how well these companies had developed economically. Another goal of the study was to conduct a further and more comprehensive analysis of all food start-ups founded between 2017 and 2019 for the same region, the greater Munich area. ...
