Interview with Daniel Auner, Mia and Ben

Following their recent multimillion-pound investment from Blue Horizon Ventures, we were pleased to speak to their Co-Founder Daniel Auner to find out more about the start-up who joined us at Future Food-Tech London in 2019 and their plans for expansion.

Mia and Ben's co-founder - Daniel Auner

Can you tell us a bit more about Mia and Ben, and how you are disrupting the food-tech industry?

Mia and Ben is all about the first 1,000 days of your life, the time when it is determined if you will be a healthy eater or not; when we grow our taste buds; when parents want the best solutions for their babies and this is when we believe there should be a fresh solution available on the market.

Fresh to us means cold-pressed, not sterilized, and keeping all the natural vitamins, nutrients and fresh color to develop the right taste buds from the start.

We want to develop healthy eaters in a healthy world. For us this means prioritizing sustainability, plant-based ingredients and offering better products that we call super food for babies. In this context, super means less processed foods using the latest science. We have a science team who bring the latest innovations in the food space from lab to shelf in record time. This is our aim as a company and now with Blue Horizon Ventures we are hoping that we can come up with the newest and best super products in the space.

Why are partnerships and investment so important?

We thrive to drive change, we have a science team and some grants for this which requires funding, so it is good to have the support of investors. At Future Food-Tech in 2019 I had 10-15 successful conversations in just two days. I had a lot of 1-1 meetings and a lot of interest, as well as a lot of follow up meetings and this was all very concentrated in one place. I could also hear from the big players and global food brands on stage. It was important for me to hear that they consider things more than a trend,  and as a challenger brand to know that I am on the right track – and maybe just a bit faster.

What’s next for Mia and Ben?

We have launched our product in the UK and Ireland and we are looking to further expand. We are currently exclusive with Sainsbury’s as part of their future brand program. We look to expand further to increase our product range with the next generation of products coming to the market in September. We are based in Germany and our Mia and Ben Institute, our research part of the business, is in Berlin so we are also looking at the German market. We are also part of a German accelerator for German start-ups in southeast Asia and we have had a lot of inbound requests from Asia so we are also looking at this market also.

Find out more about Mia & Ben at miabenorganic.com or follow on LinkedIn

Republished with the permission of the Future FoodTech Summit. See the original article at https://futurefoodtech.com/interview-with-mia-and-ben/

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