As of: April 5, 2024, 1:14 p.m
By: Amy Walker
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List shows the healthiest ready meal - why first place has to be frozen (symbolic image) © Boizet E/Alpaca/Andia.fr/Imago
Things had started so well for the supermarket chain: in 2019, the Berlin start-up appeared on the show “Höhle der Löwen”. Now a court has opened insolvency proceedings.
Berlin – The dream of a supermarket that only sells rescued food has shattered. The insolvency of the food chain Sirplus, known from the program “Lion's Den”, has now been confirmed by the court. On Wednesday (April 3rd) the lawyer Dr. Florian Linkert officially appointed as insolvency administrator. A restructuring plan should now be drawn up by the end of May in order to possibly save the company. The company had already reduced its number of employees from 90 to 30 at the end of 2023.
Sirplus filed for bankruptcy in January - the online shop remains idle
The bankruptcy was filed at the beginning of January. At that time, the company's co-founder, Raphael Fellmer, explained that they had not been able to react quickly enough to the changing market situation and had difficulty finding new investors. “I am particularly sorry for our many small investors that we were unable to turn things around. The missed professionalization in recent years has now taken its toll. On the other hand, we have gone through a steep learning curve in the new team constellation in the past few months and are therefore optimistic that we will be able to develop an economically successful business model in a newly established setup,” said Fellmer in a press release at the time.
The Berlin start-up Sirplus was founded in 2017 with the vision of saving food from the trash and reselling it. The company opened five so-called “savior markets” in Berlin - but they had to be closed after the corona pandemic in 2021. Instead, they wanted to concentrate on online trading and sell rescued food not only in Germany but even across Europe. However, since the bankruptcy petition was filed, no food can be ordered on sirplus.de.
Sirplus at “Lion’s Den”: There was a scandal
Sirplus first became known through the program “Höhle der Löwen”, where the two founders Fellmer and Martin Schott wanted 700,000 euros from investors. At that time, the two young entrepreneurs assumed that their company was worth eleven million euros - and that it would make a profit of 26 million euros in the following five years. The “Lions” thought this was overestimated, which is why they were unable to convince any of the entrepreneurs to invest. At the time, the food rescuers were criticized for their business model: “You say save food? Nope. You buy food very cheaply and resell it at a higher price. You are doing a normal business transaction. And come here like the moral apostles who want to save the world,” said Georg Kofler on the show at the time.
Nevertheless, the two founders found other investors after the show. Sirplus also managed to open the first rescue market in Berlin with the help of crowdfunding. It remains unclear whether the company will be able to continue working on its vision of a world without food waste after the restructuring has been completed. According to the court's announcement, decisions should be made by summer.