6.2 Haferkater

Reinventing train station food and investment, with crowd support

In a nutshell

Haferkater is the company that brought simple yet nourishing oat dishes from kitchen tables to train stations. Founded in 2014 the company now offers its porridges and other vegetarian & vegan food at 29 stores, primarily at central train stations. As a fast-scaling start-up, Haferkater's founders took on investors to support their journey. Realising that, despite a close and trust-based relationship with their investors, they wanted their business to stay independent and aligned to its mission, the founders searched for alternative financing and ownership forms. In 2024, the company completed its transition to steward-ownership in close collaboration with its founding investors. By successfully raising €3.5M through a crowdfunding campaign, they were able to facilitate a fair and respectful mutual buy-out, which marked a new phase for the company.

Creating a new business concept

Haferkater started in 2014 as a cozy porridge café in Berlin, serving up a simple breakfast made from just three ingredients, topped with fruits and nuts. The vision behind Haferkater is simple: to transform a humble dish made of just three ingredients into the go-to breakfast for today’s sustainability-conscious consumers. In 2014 founders Anna Schubert, Leandro Burguete and Levin Siert bought a small kebab store in Berlin and started a hip breakfast spot providing healthy takeaway porridge. The idea quickly proved to be a huge success, leading to the opening of more stores all over the country. To date, 29 company-owned and franchise branches have been established across Germany and Austria. “With Haferkater, we cater to the needs of active people in urban areas. We focus on oats and a vegan-vegetarian range, and it is important to us to grow and operate sustainably and respectfully”, explains Anna.[42] Organic high-quality ingredients are indispensable for them, and so are their teams and employees.

Success stories need support

Haferkater partnered early on with two major investors, Katjes and Zentis – both prominent players in the food industry. They provided the startup with external capital in exchange for shares, a typical approach that turned out to be fruitful also for Haferkater, enabling rapid growth for the company. “Both are family businesses and great partners who have supported us very well. But there is no guarantee that the people in charge will stay forever”, Leandro says in a recent article of the German newspaper F.A.Z. [41] 

And this was the reason that around two years ago, the founders started thinking about what they wanted Haferkater’s future to look like. Together with Purpose Consulting, the three started to dive into questions of ownership and what a sustainable financing solution could look like – ensuring long term independence, securing value-orientation while also enabling the company to grow further. It turned out that more venture capital might put Haferkater’s purpose-orientation at risk: “Our promise of quality cannot be kept if investors demand more and more profit per shop. At some point, this can only be achieved by reducing staffing levels and purchasing cheaper goods”, explains Leandro.

The three founders decided to transition their startup to steward-ownership in order to be able to grow independently and, at the same time, secure Haferkater’s value-orientation. That meant they had to buy out the two investors to get back the shares.

In the negotiations, both Zentis and Katjes aligned with the founders' vision to set up the company independently – a commitment that’s not always a given and can often be a red line for investors, especially when it comes to selling shares of a highly successful, emerging startup.

For the buy-out, the ambitious goal was to raise at least € 3.5 million with a big crowd-investing campaign – starting in December 2023. At the same time, Haferkater began to raise money also from steward-ownership aligned investors in order to enable the next growth steps as well.

Good investor relationships matter

Through Haferkater's rapid expansion at train stations, the company needed financial support for scaling up in 2017. The first investor was Katjes Greenfood with 25% of the shares. Additionally, food-producer Zentis took over 6% and a business angel 2% of shares. The three founders each kept 22% of shares, forming the majority.

The founders were fortunate to have a strong and supportive group of early investors. Katjes provided invaluable guidance on retail and showed immense support during the Covid crisis with a convertible loan. The partnership with Zentis was also highly beneficial, as they were a key partner for packaging Haferkater's products for food retail. Anna appreciates the trust all investors placed in them from the beginning, underscoring that while these relationships were successful, the company's next phase required a new structure.

The pandemic made the founders aware of the vulnerability of their business. And they chose the "Patagonia-way." For Anna and Leandro it was clear that their company should become more independent from its founders while staying true to its values. To achieve that, they worked together with Purpose Consulting and the Purpose Foundation to determine the best way to implement steward-ownership. When they communicated their wishes to their investors, they were fortunate: with Katjes and Zentis, they had supportive, family-owned businesses on board who understood the wish to safeguard the mission-orientation and to strive for independence.

The journey to steward-ownership

To make the transition to steward-ownership possible, Haferkater needed to buy out its existing investors. Given the company's success, this buyout came with a certain price tag – and wouldn't have been possible without the cooperation and support of new investors. Therefore, Haferkater decided to embark on a crowdfunding campaign through the GLS Bank’s platform to raise the necessary capital. The goal was clear: Haferkater wants to "buy itself out" and solidify its commitment to steward-ownership. They successfully raised €3.5 million in subordinated capital. The first €2.2 million will be used to expand operations and open new stores, ensuring that Haferkater no longer relies on external investor funding for future growth. The remaining €1.03 million will be combined with funds from Purpose Ventures eG to buy back shares from the existing investors, allowing the company to fully transition to steward-ownership.

Jakob Willeke from Purpose Ventures, who supported Haferkater on their journey, explains that not all companies are fortunate enough to have existing investors who want to take a different path with your company and are as cooperative as they were in the case of Haferkater. Another advantage was the brand recognition. For known brands crowdfunding offers, among other things, “stronger customer loyalty to the company.”

Crowdfinancing to buy out investors

Anna, Leandro and Levin faced some hurdles on their way to steward-ownership. Having decided that they wanted to use the power of the crowd and their loyal customers to raise the needed capital, they partnered with the GLS bank. Despite experienced partners on their side, this was the first time that a company used crowdfunding to buy out old investors and hence the German financial supervisory authorities were dealing with something unusual and new.

Another challenge was that the company was only collecting money for a company structure that they had not yet set up. To protect their investors, the founders set up an investment structure in which they can only access the raised capital after Haferkater successfully transitioned to steward-ownership.

More and more companies are following this path but a transition to steward-ownership is still not a walk in the park but requires dedicated time and appropriate resources. Especially because administrative hurdles remain because no distinct legal form exists yet – even though countries like Germany and the Netherlands are working on legislation to make steward-ownership more accessible. Haferkater also had to make this experience on their way to create a legal commitment to steward-ownership principles.

Founder compensation

With steward-ownership the three founders of Haferkater gave away their financial ownership of the company. While they won't directly benefit from the increasing value of Haferkater, they have created a founder compensation in a similar way to investor benefits – these compensations are capped and limited. Leandro explains that it is not only them who forgo financial benefits, but that also the investors have a different approach towards financial reward, than in mainstream financing. As Haferkater was very successful in 2023, the previous investors could have questioned the buyback price agreed to in 2022. But they didn't. Similarly, the new investors are all attracted to the steward-ownership thinking and logic and therefore appreciate the conditions and how they reflect their intentions and needs.

If you want to learn more about founder compensation, read VYLD's case study, and for investor relationships and financing details, check out WILDPLASTIC® and BuurtzorgT.

Successfully transitioned and financed

In October 2024, Haferkater crossed the finishing line, or rather: flew over it! The company had not only raised the targeted 3.5 million Euros with their crowdinvesting campaign, but has also collected 2.3 million Euros in capital from new investors, including Purpose Ventures, Cantella, Karma Capital and private investors. On October 10th, Purpose met the founders at the notary's office and signed the contracts that seal the transition to steward-ownership: The Purpose Foundation holds a veto right to secure the principals of steward-ownership, and Haferkater has become one true lighthouse for steward-ownership and aligned financing.

Sources:

[41] Mohr, D. Haferkater-Strategie: Warum Kapital auch mal geduldig sein muss. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. (2024)
[42] Willenbrock, H. Haferkater: „Wofür hätten wir dann all die Jahre gearbeitet?“. brand eins online. (2024)