DACH Food Innovation Units

Funded by the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, the Campus Founders’ Accelerator Program helps to strengthen the regional entrepreneurial spirit and create a home for all players in the start-up and innovation ecosystem.

DICA stands for Drink Innovation Campus and is the accelerator program of the beverage industry. In a 6-month program, startups can build and expand their beverage business.

FAB Accelerator was created by Herd Open Kitchen, Metro and Modul University to support innovative startups in the Food & Beverage sector in developing their concepts and products. The program generally lasts six months.

The foodlab in Hamburg’s Hafencity offers a co-working space for food startups, kitchen areas for testing, creating and producing food innovations, a media studio for shootings and events and a pop-up area that hosts a new restaurant concept every four weeks.

Kitchentown Berlin is the accelerator program of Bahlsen and other cooperation partners such as Symrise that helps startups develop, launch and market innovative food and beverage products.

Since 2016 MassChallenge Switzerland has been a leader in supporting startups throughout Europe. Every year, 90 startups are supported in their early stages, without equity or fees.

MXcel’s program focuses on continuous recruitment, quarterly programs, focus on business development, access to METRO and its partner network.

The Next Commerce Accelerator (NCA) is a cross-company innovation network and program to accelerate startup growth. The NCA invests up to 50.000€ in a startup.

The ProVeg Incubator is a special accelerator in the field of vegetable and cultivated food. Among the previous startups are BetterNature, VlyFoods, Mondarella, Greenwise,  Legendairy Foods, Panvega and the nu company.

The Retail Tech Hub is an accelerator for retail companies, initiated by MediaMarktSaturn. It focuses on joint pilot projects between startups and established retailers.

Seedhouse specifically targets startup teams that are at the very beginning of their idea or in the early stages of their business development. A special focus is on startups in the agricultural and food industry and digitalisation.

TechFounders is a 20 week international program based in Munich, Germany. The Accelerator brings together technology startups with corporate partners and venture capitalists.

The EDEKA Food Tech Campus is a place where food and tech meet. Through coworking space, events and services, startups can realize their potential here.

Foodhub NRW is an innovation platform and community. It networks players in the agricultural and food industry from the field to the shelf in order to jointly develop future-oriented solutions for the sectors.

The Haco Innovation Lab supports passion for food. Its mission is to support founders with new ideas and innovative technologies.

Through NX FOOD, innovative food entrepreneurs can, among other things, sell their products for three months on special startup shelves at METRO Cash & Carry and Real.

With digital ideas, innovations and business models, Oetker Digital accompanies the traditional Oetker Group into the future.

Ricolab builds on Ricola’s heritage to develop new business models with a long-term perspective and promote the well-being of people, communities and nature.

SnackFutures is the new innovation center of Mondelēz International, dedicated to opening up new snack opportunities around the world.

Nestlé has joined forces with, among others, the Swiss College of Hotel and Catering in Lausanne (EHL Group) to develop a global innovation ecosystem around food and nutrition.

RootCamp – a SpinLab incubator – is a three to twelve month incubation program. The RootCamp is primarily aimed at technology startups in the agricultural and food sectors.

The EIT Seedbed Early Stage Incubator Program trains and supports teams over a period of six months to help them better understand their customers’ needs and validate their business ideas.

The 2b AHEAD Company Builder and Incubator builds new business areas individually for its clients. Together with apetito and other company partners, for example, robot cooks and in-vitro meat solutions are developed.

The 10X Innovation is the startup incubator in the Melitta group of companies. The division, which was newly founded in 2018, analyses and concretises promising product ideas and drives them to market maturity.

Together with ALDI Süd, ALDI Nord wants to offer TechFounders, a start-up accelerator program to help F&B start-ups succeed.

Since January 2019, ALDI Süd together with ALDI Nord has been the first food retailer to cooperate with the leading start-up accelerator TechFounders.

Bünting focuses on a corporate startup collaboration in which startups can learn from the wealth of experience, growth and versatile performance of the traditional company.

The GELITA Startup Partnerships enable cooperation between a large, internationally active corporation in the field of gelatine production and startups.

Orthomol Innovations is looking for startups, professionals and academics in the areas of health, nutrition or exercise. The aim is to establish a corporate startup partnership.

As an innovative company and pioneer in online food trading, REWE Startups wants to use the REWE Startup Award to simplify the way to customers.

Atlantic Food Labs is a venture studio and early stage investor in startups with solutions to feed ten billion people in a sustainable and healthy way by 2050.

Blue Horizon is a 2018 food tech venture capital fund and has recently announced a number of new investments in the innovative food companies Mia & Ben, Cubiq Foods, Heartbest and Biomilq.

BlueYard is a small venture capital firm that invests primarily in early-stage startups. Founded in 2016, the fund focuses on fundamentally new approaches and technologies that have a global network or platform character.

Clever Clover specialises in identifying, evaluating, investing in and supporting early stage new businesses that offer unique offerings in sectors such as travel, leisure, manufacturing, retail and food.

Good Seed Ventures is a family owned venture capital firm that invests exclusively in sustainable food technology.

Oyster Bay Capital Partners focuses primarily on later-stage companies in the plant-based, sustainable and/or functional food and beverage consumer goods sector.

Purple Orange Ventures is an entrepreneurially managed impact seed fund based in Berlin. It supports early-stage teams that use science and technology to remove animals from the global food system.

Redalpine is a seed and early stage venture investor. The fund invests in disruptive technologies with a focus on highly scalable ICT and health technology models. The portfolio also includes food tech startups such as Mushlabs.

Be8 Ventures is the venture capital vehicle of Dr. Oetker, with which the food company now also wants to invest in start-ups in the food sector.

The goal of Bitburger Ventures is to combine the growth dynamics of young, innovative companies with the financial strength and access to different expertise along the value chain of the Bitburger Group.

Döhler Ventures is a long-term oriented and entrepreneurial investor that supports startups in the early stages of the food and technology ecosystem.

Katjesgreenfood is the first European investor in the food sector. The VC’s portfolio contains startups that want to make their contribution to a plant-based future.

M-Venture is the innovation and investment unit of Mast-Jägermeister SE with the mission to shape the nightlife of the future.

Müller Ventures AG invests in young startup companies along the food and beverage value chain in order to achieve a financial return and promote a culture of innovation.

On the one hand, the PHW Group supports startups as a corporate partner within the framework of the StartLife program, and on the other hand it also participates in these companies via the Seedhouse and its own venture capital investments.

Square One Foods from the Austrian private label manufacturer Spitz acts as a strategic partner and investor for innovative start-ups in the food and beverage industry.

The Tengelmann Ventures portfolio comprises a diverse group of companies around the world. The main sectors are Consumer Internet, Digital Services and Emerging Tech.

Vorwerk Ventures is an independent € 150 million venture capital fund that emerged from the Vorwerk Group at the end of 2019 and is defined by a strong commitment to consumer-oriented digital companies.

Zentis Ventures supports startups from the early phase to the growth phase. At present, the focus is mainly on companies from the DACH region.