Munich Startup: What does Your Root do? What problem do you solve?
Thomas Oppenheimer, Your Root: With Your Root, we are solving the problem of providing fresh vegetables for quick, easy consumption and making healthy eating an integral part of everyday life. For this, we offer five delicious products in organic quality and without any additives – our Soup’r Drinks. They meet the Nutri-Score A rating and, thanks to a special high-pressure process, can be kept for up to 90 days without heating or preservatives while retaining all their nutrients.
Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!
Thomas Oppenheimer, Your Root: Our Soup’r Drinks are a completely new product category: pure, organic-certified vegetables in a bottle that can be used in a variety of ways – as a drink, soup or sauce. Their biggest advantage is their minimal fructose content compared to fruit smoothies or fruit-vegetable mixed drinks, which is why the sugar level in the body is not oversaturated and the product has a Nutri-Score A rating. Another USP is that they are fresh or uncooked, but still have a shelf life of up to twelve weeks. We achieve this with high-pressure pasteurization, which kills harmful bacteria and microorganisms but preserves the nutrients, vitamins, taste and texture of the product – without any colourings, flavourings or preservatives.
Fresh vegetables for quick consumption
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Thomas Oppenheimer, Your Root: As a former professional athlete and father of four children, I know how important but also how exhausting it is to integrate healthy eating into a stressful everyday life. Fresh vegetables for quick consumption in everyday life was a gap in the market that I wanted to fill. As I had already been interested in nutrition during my ice hockey career, particularly in vegetables and oils and their positive effects on fitness and the prevention of chronic diseases, the idea for Your Root was quickly born after I ended my active career in 2020 and brainstormed with a nutritionist friend.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Thomas Oppenheimer, Your Root: The biggest hurdle for me was developing a marketable product from an idea that could be produced on a large scale. That’s a huge step that many people underestimate. Especially in the food sector, there are many legal requirements to be met. Especially if you want to be certified organic. In addition, numerous adjustments have to be made to the composition and production process until the optimum drinking experience is achieved. This didn’t work for us straight away, but we managed it and are proud that our Soup’r Drinks are now not only extremely healthy, but also taste so delicious that even children like them.
Further products for a balanced diet in planning
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where would you like to be in five years?
Thomas Oppenheimer, Your Root: Our aim is to further expand our distribution channels next year in order to reach as many people as possible with our Soup’r Drinks. Perhaps we will have received enough customer feedback by then to be able to work on new, desired varieties. And in five years’ time, we want to be an established company whose products have arrived on the market and are available nationwide through retailers. In the next step, we want to focus on other products for a balanced diet and already have a few ideas.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Thomas Oppenheimer, Your Root: Munich has a lively startup culture with a good infrastructure for founding companies. Here you get to know many like-minded, interesting people who have already experienced a lot in the business world at a young age. This exchange of experiences is extremely helpful and important for learning from each other’s mistakes, recognizing them early on and ideally avoiding them altogether.
Munich Startup: Public transport or bike?
Thomas Oppenheimer, Your Root: For business appointments that are a little further away, I like to use public transport. Otherwise: bicycle!