MTH Unboxing: MARKTKOST

In May, MTH Unboxing is all about deli­cious and healt­hy lunch. The foun­ders of MARKT­KOST Lau­ra-Maria Horn and Lucia Cloth reve­al how lunch and tech go tog­e­ther for them and how the MTH Acce­le­ra­tor has hel­ped them on their journey.

MTH Acce­le­ra­tor: What did you do befo­re MARKTKOST?

Lau­ra: During my busi­ness stu­dies, I actual­ly owned a small cate­ring com­pa­ny. In the last deca­de, I‘ve work­ed for seve­ral lar­ge cate­ring and event com­pa­nies. Through the­se expe­ri­en­ces, I beca­me awa­re of the need that small com­pa­nies have: to offer bet­ter cate­ring opti­ons to their employees. I’ve always loved an entre­pre­neu­ri­al chall­enge, and this paved the way for me to crea­te MARKTKOST.

Lucia: Befo­re joi­ning MARKT­KOST, I work­ed as a free­lan­ce com­pu­ter sci­en­tist for various com­pa­nies in the food indus­try and for num­e­rous pro­jects in Berlin.

MTH Acce­le­ra­tor: What do you do when you are not working at MARKTKOST?

Lau­ra: Start­ing a busi­ness is a full-time job—there’s not much time for any­thing else. But when I do have some free time, I like to go out in the Bran­den­burg area or try out new recipes for the MARKT­KOST menu.

Lucia: I actual­ly like to use my free time to take a deep dive into a spe­ci­fic code.

MTH Acce­le­ra­tor: What is MARKTKOST?

MARKT­KOST: MARKT­KOST offers lunch opti­ons (we call it Lunch-as-a-Ser­vice) to com­pa­nies that don‘t have a cafe­te­ria. Via indi­vi­du­al online user accounts, employees of our cor­po­ra­te cli­ents can sel­ect healt­hy meals from our weekly offe­rings. The­se lun­ches are then deli­ver­ed to the com­pa­ny once a week in reusable jars. Our food does not con­tain pre­ser­va­ti­ves, and thanks to our spe­cial pro­duc­tion pro­cess, lun­ches can be kept fresh for the who­le week. Meals are rea­dy to eat in just a few minu­tes, and you can eat them any­whe­re and at any­ti­me. We offer com­pa­nies a tech-based opti­on for balan­ced and sus­tainable lun­ches, which do not con­tain was­teful pack­a­ging and do not con­tri­bu­te to food was­te, unli­ke in many cafeterias.

MTH Acce­le­ra­tor: Why the MTH Accelerator?

MARKT­KOST: The MTH Acce­le­ra­tor not only offers us an gre­at loca­ti­on in which to work and a won­derful net­work, but it has been a real help in tack­ling important issues such as finan­cing. Despi­te having a lot of work expe­ri­ence, we are new busi­ness owners and the­re are many chal­lenges. Thanks to the sup­port of MTH Acce­le­ra­tor, we have been able to make inte­res­t­ing cont­acts, which have resul­ted in gre­at oppor­tu­ni­ties for sales and PR.

MTH Acce­le­ra­tor: Why MARKTKOST?

MARKT­KOST: Many exis­ting cate­ring solu­ti­ons for com­pa­nies do not ade­qua­te­ly meet their cli­ents’ envi­ron­men­tal and nutri­on stan­dards, and the food that they pro­vi­de is dull and nutrious­ly unba­lan­ced. Also, the incre­asing need for work fle­xi­bi­li­ty brings new chal­lenges for qua­li­ty employee catering.

MARKT­KOST pro­vi­des small companies—as few as five employees—with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer a varie­ty of sus­tainable lunch offe­rings. This is a popu­lar employee bene­fit, which increa­ses employee satis­fac­tion. In this way, as part of their employ­er bran­ding stra­tegy, com­pa­nies can posi­ti­on them­sel­ves posi­tively to main­tain and recruit talen­ted employees. By using Lunch-as-a-Ser­vice, our cli­ents make a straight­for­ward con­tri­bu­ti­on to the sus­taina­bi­li­ty of their company.

MTH Acce­le­ra­tor: What is your mission?

MARKT­KOST: Our mis­si­on is to offer nut­ri­tious, deli­cious, and sus­tainable lunch opti­ons for employees. In doing so, we sup­port com­pa­nies in pro­mo­ting the well-being of their teams and allow them to posi­ti­on them­sel­ves as attrac­ti­ve employ­ers. And we offer employees a varie­ty of balan­ced and fresh lunch opti­ons, which are envi­ron­men­tal­ly sustainable.

About MTH Unboxing 

The MTH Acce­le­ra­tor port­fo­lio is gro­wing and gro­wing. But what exact­ly do the teams do and, abo­ve all, what did they do befo­re they beca­me entre­pre­neurs? In MTH Unboxing, our new inter­view series, we shed some light on the sub­ject and intro­du­ce the teams in more detail. MTH Acce­le­ra­tor Babels­berg is the pro­gram for start­ups and foun­ding teams from the metro­po­li­tan regi­on who are loo­king to explo­re tech­no­lo­gies and digi­tal busi­ness models and take their com­pa­nies to the next level.

Learn more about the pro­gram, our latest port­fo­lio start­ups and events in our newsletter.