Holiroots was born in an entrepreneurship competition of European Institute of Innovation & Technology. The challenge? The holistic use of vegetables!
During our Bioeconomy studies at the University of Hohenheim, Germany, our commitment to making our food system more sustainable and our interest in social entrepreneurship drive us to apply to the European-wide competition “From Leaf to Root” The holistic use of vegetables. It was a one-year project where we developed a ready-to-eat nutritious food product based on plant parts lost at the farm level.
The competition started, and so did the pandemic, yes…hard times! However, after 12 challenging months and a lot of laughs, tears, and sleepless nights, we won 2nd place with our 1st vegetable cracker made of carrots! And… weeks later the shocking happened! We got the support of an investor to develop further our product and create the now Holiroots Crackers!
There is so much to share about our story that it would be difficult to summarize in one blog entry, but one of the most important outcomes of the competition was that we set the fundamentals of our startup Holiroots, our mission, and values. To have a sustainable company is very challenging, and we are not perfect, not even close to that, but we work every day to make our startup each day better.
Further links:
https://youtu.be/_i35_z-nnn0
https://www.eitfood.eu/projects/from-leaf-to-root-holistic-use-of-vegetables-2020