4:27 - The early days of Knecker
13:00 - The Knecker recipe
20:09 - The Knecker buyer persona
22:24 - Packaging
31:58 - Going for bigger retailers
Anne Richter is the founder and CEO of Knecker, a startup which produces vegan protein-rich snacks. She got her MA in Economical Engineering from the Technische Universität Berlin and afterwards worked for a series of energy companies, before starting her own venture in 2020.
Anne met her co-founder Susanne while volunteering at the local Ludothek. Since Anne had just had her third child, she was especially impressed by Susanne's success as both a mother and entrepreneur. Together they developed the idea of a vegan Kneckerbröt, for an age which requires climate-friendly snacks.
The base ingredient of Knecker is organic soy, sourced from an Austrian farm. The recipe then also contains sesame, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and lin seeds. It's gluten-free, and comes in three different flavours: mountain salt (geared towards sporty-people), rosemary (usually eaten as an appero), and curry and thyme (for chip lovers).
Knecker's proof of concept phase began right after lockdown, making buyers twice as enthusiastic about having the product in their stores. Knecker's buyer persona is an outdoorsy, sporty, environmentally-conscious person between the age of 20-55.
Keeping in line with the climate-friendly theme, Knecker packages are refillable and available at "unpacked shops" — meaning zero waste, package-free shops.
While Anne would love to start expanding Knecker as soon as possible, it's getting harder and harder to enter the EU market these days, so she feels she still needs more volume in Switzerland before she can finally take that challenge on.
"I'm alive in order to change things. I think it's part of my DNA."
"Everyone who has a company should be on Instagram."
If you would like to listen to more episodes on climate-friendly food, check out our conversation with Mark Essam.
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