A 200-Year-Old Farm’s Leap into the Convenience Market

European Business: Mr. Giner, your family has been running a farm in Tyrol for over 200 years. A few years ago, however, you decided to radically shift gears and enter the gastronomy and convenience food sector on the strong basis of your established agricultural business. What led to that ambition? 

Andreas Giner: Our farm has been deeply rooted in vegetable cultivation for decades – especially potatoes, where we have always been particularly strong. But even 20 years ago, one issue kept bothering us: We had to discard large quantities of perfectly good potatoes due to minor imperfections in their skin. From a sustainability perspective, that simply did not sit right with us. So we began looking for ways to keep this so-called waste in the value chain. We found inspiration in the UK and Germany, where the convenience food sector was already much more advanced than in Austria at the time. Today, we offer a wide variety of more than 1,400 different products with which we supply both commercial kitchens and wholesalers – essentially everything a professional kitchen might need, from chili con carne and Thai curry to lasagna, plus sauces, pasta, and a variety of marinated salads. 

European Business: That is a truly remarkable entrepreneurial transformation. How did you manage it? 

Andreas Giner: It was a 15-year journey, and we couldn’t have done it without our incredible team – people who stand behind our business 100%. The driving force behind the change was our chefs, who understood the mounting pressure in commercial kitchens and canteens: Once professional chefs hit a certain age, they don’t want to spend weekends or late nights behind the stove in the food-service sector anymore – and who could blame them? That is why the industry has been facing a massive staff shortage – and our solutions help address precisely that problem. 

European Business: This includes a new cooking robot you have been using in collaboration with goodBytz: To this end, you even launched a new venture called HappyBytz. 

Andreas Giner: Just a few kilometers from our farm, there is a business park where 10,000 people go to work every day. The only food options that currently exist there are a kebab stand and a hot dog vendor. Meanwhile, eating at the proper restaurants a few kilometers away costs approximately 15 EUR a meal—which is often beyond the daily meals budget of a construction worker or tradesperson. So our cooking robot is not at all replacing anyone’s job – because there was no job there to begin with, which is precisely the problem in the first place. What we’re doing is filling a gap by making everyday life better for people. At the same time, we stay completely true to our values: keeping regionality front and center, while offering incredible culinary variety. During our pilot week, we served classic Tyrolean dishes like Kasspatzeln, Gröstl, and sausage noodles. Just a week later, the same robot was preparing Asian meals using our own recipes. There are many more applications that come to mind instantly – take the chronic staffing shortages in schools, nursing homes, and hospitals, for example. 

European Business: What changes are on the horizon for your company in the near future? 

Andreas Giner: Our business has been growing rapidly in recent years, so going forward, we intend to focus on creating a more structured approach – especially when it comes to how we develop and present our quotes to prospective customers. At the same time, we are determined not to lose our agility and flexibility. If you asked my team, they would probably say that I occasionally trigger a bit of controlled chaos – like when we dive into developing a complex new product like a salad bowl without having a fully detailed battle plan from the start. But that plan usually takes shape naturally in the first few days of production. We improve iteratively, bit by bit – and within a week, the whole team is running like clockwork. 

European Business: What is your personal motivation for driving these changes? 

Andreas Giner: I truly believe that producing food is one of the most meaningful things anyone can do with their life. After all, food is essential no matter the circumstances – entire wars have been fought over it in the past. From a very young age, I knew I wanted to be part of our family business, even though it was clear from the outset that my brother would take over the farming side. Once I had completed my training in agricultural engineering, the opportunity arose for me to expand our operations into the convenience food sector – and I seized it wholeheartedly. Now, with our robotics solution, we are currently taking the next step into the future – so we can offer healthy, regional, and delicious meals better than ever before.