Mobility meets food: three Berlin start-ups show exciting cooperation

A healthy diet in the workplace, delivered quickly and in an environmentally friendly way, fresh and tailored to your needs – that is what an unusual cooperation from Berlin promises.

Berlin, June 7, 2019 – The collaboration start-up People with Passion brought the food start-up How I Like and the mobility start-up citkar together in a joint cooperation. At a SIBB workshop last Tuesday, the three presented their exciting cooperation to great applause.

The focus is on several challenges: Many employers do not have a canteen for organisational and financial reasons, but want to offer their employees a healthy nutrition. Existing snack machines and delivery services do not really offer satisfactory solutions for companies and employees. The products often do not meet the wishes of the employees. They have to be ordered well in advance or the item you want is out of stock in the machine. That is why many employees get their food from the supermarket or from the snack bar nearby. But this costs time and ruins a relaxing break.

According to the ideas of the three young companies, that should change: they want to enable smart food supply in companies through a clever combination of their products and services – an intelligent office refrigerator, a fully covered e-cargo bike and a communication offering that integrates employees.

With its products and services, the cooperation has now started a pilot phase in Berlin. How I Like offers a refrigerator that knows its contents and its users and that reports as soon as something is out of stock. In this way, the actual consumption is recognised and replenishment is provided in good time by automatic data transmission. The refrigerator is already used in several Berlin and Brandenburg companies. “As a result, we have already been able to give many employees of our corporate customers a more valuable meal, a healthier snack and a more relaxing break,” reports How I Like founder Sven Forgber.

As soon as there is a need for supplies, citkar comes into play. Mobility is required to get the goods to the fridges. With the conventional car you would get stuck in traffic jams in cities these days anyway, the parking lot is the next almost insoluble challenge. Normal bicycles and especially cargo bicycles are not for everyone and in bad weather they are a considerable additional burden. The citkar Loadster, however, is a fully covered pedelec that copes with all weather conditions and is safe and stable on four wheels. “With the Loadster, large quantities of goods are moved on the bike path with the comfort of a car,” citkar founder Jonas Kremer describes his invention.

To meet the wishes of the employees with the offered products, People with Passion integrates them into the design of the offer. Whether on site or via the Internet, wishes and ideas are recorded at regular intervals so that the product range and communication can be designed in an attractive manner. The founder of the collaboration start-up People with Passion, Dr. Christina Schwarze emphasises their importance: “It is important to us that we design the product and communication offering together with the people. Centralised and ineffective guidelines are simply no longer up to date. “

With the end of the start-up phase in mid-June, it is planned to expand the cooperation with innovation partners from the food industry and trade. The aim is to implement the intelligent food supply according to the existing and future How I Like locations in more and more Berlin districts. Subsequently, the opportunity to use it in other German districts as well. Companies interested in intelligent food supply for their employees are welcome to contact How I Like. This also applies in particular to innovation-oriented companies from the food and retail sectors. Who can also get in touch directly with People with Passion.