18 small bottles of juice for three days. This is how the juice cleanse from high-quality ingredients of the Hamburg company Kale&Me works. To ensure that these miracle weapons reach the customer unharmed, the Hamburgers rely on our land box made of straw.

• Do you have a corporate philosophy or a personal motto?
• Yes, it can be described in a quotation from Socrates: “The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less”

 

• In the beginning, you focused only on the online business. Now you are increasingly also represented in supermarkets. Where do you see more potential in the medium term? Which sales channel is more interesting for you?
• That’s quite true. Since last summer, we have been placing our juices more and more in supermarkets, but also in cafés and restaurants. Food retailing is a very interesting market that has grown significantly in recent years, especially in the beverages sector. Nevertheless, we continue to see our potential in the online market. While supermarket customers make their purchasing decisions primarily on the basis of price, we can provide far more background information on our juices in our online shop: We can explain to them who is behind our products, why our cold-pressed juices differ from standard smoothies and even where our raw materials come from. A further argument in favour of the online market is independence. As soon as we have to supply wholesalers nationwide, we are dependent on these markets. At a certain point, these markets would begin to squeeze margins, so that we would be forced to forego our current high quality. But we don’t want to do that, because Kale&Me stands out for its high quality juices.

 

• You decided very early to use our sustainable and natural straw packaging as insulation for your juices. Why? What do your customers say about your juices that are packed in straw?
• Our juices are very high quality. They also have a high price due to the use of fresh, mostly regional ingredients as well as the elaborate production and preservation with the ultra-high pressure process. The customer also expects an unpacking experience with high quality and expensive products that is of the same quality as the products in the packaging. After all, he pays high shipping costs for it. We specifically chose straw insulation because it offers the best insulation compared to other materials. When shipping our sensitive products, this is extremely important to ensure that the customer receives the quality we describe. In addition, your packaging smells so great. The straw is met with a lot of enthusiasm from our customers and we have already received a lot of positive feedback. We also receive regular e-mails in which customers send us pictures of homemade things from your packaging or our bottles.

 

• A lot has been reported about you. How do you explain your success?
• Kale&Me stands for transparency: We always let our customers and partners participate in all our activities. Right from the start, we communicated openly about our idea, our team, our products, the cost structure and production. Each of our employees stands behind the quality and history of our juices. This is an important aspect that helps us to move forward, allows us to develop further and thus contributes to our overall success. In order to be able to report on someone, you need information – both positive and sometimes negative. As a young company, we learn new things again and again and try to constantly expand and improve. I think that’s exactly why we find information about Kale&Me that can be reported on.

 

• How does Kale&Me differ from other juice cleanses?
• During our juice cleans, you only consume juices for three or five days. At intervals of about 2 hours, a total of six different juices are drunk throughout the day. The special thing about our juice cleanses are that we have developed the composition of all juices together with nutritionists. In this way, we ensure that the customer consumes the “right” vitamins at the right time of day. The first juice of the day – our Pamela Pine – provides vitamin C through the pineapple and lemon, for example, to help start the day awake and well. Al Avoca is drunk at lunchtime and is saturated, for example, by the healthy fats of the avocado. And in the evening, our almond milk Amy Almond donates proteins that saturate and replenish the energy stores.

 

• Do you develop new juices and their mixtures and flavours yourself?
• Exactly – we develop all our juices ourselves. The first seven varieties were developed by us in the kitchen and in consultation with our nutritionist. We have even just produced the first juice, which is tested according to the “rules of product development” including sensory tasting and questionnaires. The ideas usually come about because we have just rediscovered a regional raw material. When we developed Billy Basil, for example, we thought, “Sea buckthorn is such a great product, it’s not yet available in such a form, but it’s typical for the North. Then we plan around it until we have a harmonious juice that we all approve of.

 

• How long will it take you to develop a new juice?
• The basic idea of the ingredients is in about half a day 😀 So far there is only one juice, which we have developed in addition to the juice cleanse. Nevertheless, adjustments are occasionally made after customer feedback.

 

• You attach great importance to social media campaigns. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are among them. Which channel is most effective for you? Where do you best reach your or new customers?
• This has actually changed over time. At the beginning we announced the foundation and the company mainly via Facebook. This was directly connected with a small awareness boost. Over time, however, bloggers have helped us by testing our juices and reporting on them on their blogs and social media channels. Now we can say that it is an interaction of all channels through which we reach our customers.

 

The Landpack team says thank you very much for the interview!

Pictures provided with the kind support of Tamara Wagner.