The exciting idea came to two students Julia Piechotta and Amelie Vermeer at their shared flat in Hohenheim, Stuttgart as they complained to each other that there were hardly any reasonable alternatives to disposable spoons. After a few experiments and various prototypes, the sustainable alternative was launched in 2019.
‘Our ice cream and dessert spoon is free of plastic, vegan and climate-neutral throughout its production process. We took a long time to refine the recipe to get the best functionality and taste. Our ‘spoonie’ tastes like a biscuit and is supposed to be eaten,’ said Julia Piechotta, co-founder of Spoontainable.
The spoon comes with a choice of two tastes: the standard taste and chocolate taste. The spoons are produced through upcycling waste products from food processing. They are primarily made from oat husks or, for the chocolate variety, from fibres from cocoa husks.
The startup based in Heidelberg received the award as a result of a public vote at the ‘Demo Day’, the last of several days of a startup bootcamp at Frankfurt’s TechQuartier.
At Rentenbank’s boot camp, co-founders of twelve startups discussed their solutions for Agri-FoodTech business with established entrepreneurial personalities, experts in setting up businesses and potential investors. The participants were trained at workshops and through webinars on such topics as growth strategies and negotiating and marketing methods. The agenda included detailed discussions with Hans Joachim Fuchtel, the parliamentary undersecretary from the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, who visited the boot camp on Monday. He discussed business models with founders, offered advice on funding options and took with him ideas for addressing the current challenges facing agribusiness.
Background information:
Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank is Germany’s development agency for agribusiness and rural areas. Under its statutory promotional mandate, Rentenbank provides loans at favourable interest rates for agriculture-related investments via other banks on a competitively neutral basis. Rentenbank provides funding for banks, savings banks and local authorities operating in rural areas. The appropriation of profits is also subject to the promotional mandate. The Bank is a federal public law institution whose capital stock was formed by contributions paid by the German agricultural and forestry sectors. It is subject to the German Banking Act (KWG) and is regulated by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) and the Bundesbank. The Bank is one of the few triple-A rated institutions in Germany and raises funds primarily in the financial markets. Rentenbank does not receive any funds from the federal government budget but generates its own funds to keep fulfilling its statutory promotional mandate and its operations running.
