“I am an entrepreneur with passion and love to always start from scratch and get ideas ready for the market.”
Munich Sabine Engel has just survived the greatest crisis in her career as an entrepreneur. At the beginning of the corona crisis, the sales of your experience voucher provider Miomente had temporarily slumped by 90 percent. But thanks to new digital offers – from gin tastings at home to virtual visits to Mexico – sales are already above pre-crisis levels.
Now Engel is daring to take on the next challenge, because: “I am an entrepreneur with passion and love to start from scratch again and again and make ideas ready for the market.” With her new start-up Frida & Fritz, she wants decaffeinated coffee from its staid image in Germany and market it as a hip product for “lifestyle-oriented connoisseurs” in the online shop.
The goals are ambitious: “We want to roast 500 tons of coffee by 2025,” says Engel. That would correspond to around 15 million euros in sales. Expansion into neighboring European countries is already planned.
The potential market is big. Coffee is still the most popular drink in Germany. Engel was also a coffee junkie. Two years ago, she wanted to switch to decaf coffee while pregnant. “But there weren’t many offers and, above all, none that I liked,” she says.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
She is convinced that the trend towards decaffeinated coffee from the USA will soon also take hold in Germany. According to Grand View Research, the market for decaffeinated roast coffee is expected to grow by an average of seven percent per year to $ 2.8 billion by 2027. Other market researchers see the potential for $ 15 billion by 2031.
In any case, Engel is convinced: “The market growth is playing us in the cards.” In the home office, many households would have bought a high-quality coffee machine in the Corona period. But high-quality decaffeinated coffee is difficult to find. Engel founded Frida & Fritz together with Christian Kohlhof. He has a lot of experience in the industry. He co-founded chicco di caffè in 2003, which operates café bars in companies and universities, among other things.
Sales of decaffeinated coffee are booming in Silicon Valley
Frida & Fritz roasts the coffee in Chiemgau. The caffeine is extracted without the use of chemicals, emphasizes Engel. In the lifestyle segment there are smaller competitors like No Coffee and OHNE. However, Frida & Fritz has a wider range of currently seven varieties on offer. “We are already working on the development of other varieties,” says Engel.
Even with Miomente, Engel had specialized in the culinary sector when it was founded more than ten years ago. The company offers cooking courses and cocktail evenings, for example. Engel got the idea for the company when she couldn’t find a suitable cocktail course for her husband. The founder gave up her job as a controller at Bosch and started her own company, financed by herself.
This only went up for years – until Corona came. In spring 2020, cooking courses and barbecues had to be canceled, the employees went on short-time work. But Engel quickly turned to digital offers such as the virtual gin distillery tour – the sample package is sent to the customer’s home.
So now coffee. Coffee is no longer considered to be as harmful to health as it used to be. Some studies now even certify a health-promoting effect with moderate consumption. Scientists at the University of Colorado came to the conclusion that coffee consumption can lower the risk of heart attacks.
But some people do not tolerate caffeine. Sales of decaffeinated coffee are booming in Silicon Valley, says Engel. “Anyone who already has a very strenuous day-to-day work does not want to stress themselves with the neurotoxin caffeine.”
With the new company, Engel can fall back on her experience with moments with digital business models. Vouchers also play an important role in coffee sales.
More: JAB Holding of the Reimann billionaire family is making high profits again – but problems remain.