Photo by Hafenkater

The big news arrived in mid-October: Haferkater, famous throughout Germany for its healthy porridge-to-go at traffic hubs, has – with the support of the Purpose Network – successfully transitioned to steward-ownership. Now it’s the first major player in the transit food service sector that can never be speculatively sold again. For the step of becoming steward-owned, the founders had to buy out early stage investors – and raise at least around 3.5 million Euros of investment capital.

You are keen to learn how well investment can work with steward-ownership, enabling long-term independence and purpose-orientation? This is what the Haferkater story is all about. It started ten years ago, when 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.

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.

And this was the reason that around two years ago, the founders started thinking about what they wanted Haferkater’s future to look like. “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. 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. In October this year, 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, we 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 aligned financing.  

Story taken from the magazine Stories of Purpose #2, December 2024.