Food Brands Top Jung Von Matt’s 2024 Ranking of Most Popular Startups in Germany

Food brands dominate the Startup Brand Ranking 2024 of the most popular start-ups among consumers in Germany, which is published annually by Jung von Matt START. Jung von Matt START is the Jung von Matt business unit, which specialises in supporting start-ups from the early stages and helps young companies to build their brand. 

Healthy eating brand KoRo has taken the top slot in Jung von Matt START’s annual Startup Brand Ranking. Following KoRo, are Lieferando, Gustavo Gusto, Stadtsalat, and Like in the top five.

Notably, these consumer-favourites have a focus on health and sustainability and offer an alternative to meat, poor-quality convenience food, high-calorie food delivery and the pure profit focus of other big food brands in the market.

Jung von Matt’s Startup Brand Ranking, which first launched in 2021, investigates how consumers perceive young brands. The industry-renowned ranking measures the image of young consumer brands with the support of Appinio. For this study, 8,000 consumers are surveyed six times a year. The annual ranking is based on their impressions.

In the rankings this year, the digital industry falls short, with just two purely digital brands in the top 10 - Adblock and Dr. SAM. As for traditional e-commerce, new marketplaces have become scarce for those who want to digitise and revolutionise the world of advertising and catalogues. About You is one of the youngest brands, although it has been on the market for 10 years. It is mainly D2C brands that are still being created in significant numbers. This is also the reason why the German consumer sector is mainly dominated by international brands and is less digital than it was a few years ago.

Others in the top ten include Zalando, which is ranked sixth, Recup at ninth and Zolar in tenth place.

KoRo combines healthy eating and sustainability with a simple brand experience and excellent distribution strategies. Clever product placements, such as '7 vs. Wild', rather than large media budgets catapulted the brand to the top of the rankings. The brand image is characterised by its consistent and recognisable design. While other food brands are becoming increasingly colourful and over the top, KoRo adopts a more modest approach without becoming ordinary. The product photography sticks out all the more, staged and visualised to a high aesthetic standard.

Simon Knittel, lead at Jung von Matt START said, “We are particularly proud of the new additions to the ranking! In parallel to the overall Top 10 list, we have introduced the Top 10 Rising Stars! These are start-ups under five years old – this classification helps to make industry trends such as climate tech much more visible. In order to also better reflect the special features of the individual sectors, the top five start-ups in the categories of e-commerce, food, health, drugstores, travel, finance and insurance and mobility were identified this year for the first time.“

While venture capital in Germany is declining, climate technology has received significant investments since the pandemic. This is one of the reasons why 1komma5, for example, made it to second place in the newly introduced Top 10 Rising Stars! Although sustainability has lost some of its appeal recently, the Rising Star brands show a clear positive trend. Possible reasons include a 2% decrease in inflation and the Consumer Price Index, which brought some stability to the consumer brand market. This raises the prospect of seeing new brands in other industries - which ones, will be established in the 2024 categories.

For more details, insights and to view startup rankings in individual sectors across E-commerce, Health, Food, Beauty, Travel, Finance & Insurance and Mobility click here.