"Snacking is human" – Three boys from Berlin are revolutionising the culture of snacking with passion and humour

Berlin, GER, For Immediate Release - What happens when three guys that have a soft spot for snacking and care about sustainability find themselves standing in front of supermarket shelves and become immensely disappointed? They simply create their own snack! Rejne Rittel, Max Lion Scherer and Tobias Enge are the three founders of Wildcorn. The savoury, spicy organic popcorn is the perfect solution for everyone who regrets the lack of self-control after already having eaten an entire bag of crisps but just cannot live without those much-loved snack moments. The Wildcorn founders have all made the very same experience and therefore came up with the only solution there is to this problem: creating an alternative snack themselves. “Sometime after the 30th birthday you cannot help yourself but start feeling ashamed about gobbling up chips like a horse,” Rejne Rittel admits with a laugh.

You would primarily find deep-fried crisps on the shelves that every now and then come in new different flavours such as “Doner Kebab”, “Stadionwurst” (a flavour that is supposed to resemble the taste of a fried sausage served at the football stadium) or in unicorn designs. Looking for a healthier snack in vain only inspired 41-year-old Rejne to take matters into his own hands: together with Max and Tobias he created Wildcorn. Their mission: “Keep away from ingredients nobody knows and nobody wants. There is no reason to turn healthy raw ingredients into dubious consumer goods,” says Rejne. Therefore Wildcorn is always free of preservatives, added sugar, colourings and always offers best organic quality.

Anyone who opens one of the striped Wildcorn bags for the very first time and experiences the explosion of the organic popcorn’s spicy taste in the mouth will instantly notice: Wildcorn is extraordinary. The three founders have only one thing on their mind. And that is to revolutionise the retailers’ snack shelves with their savoury, spicy popcorn. And the extraordinary hearty flavours in which the wild popcorn is available will definitely help in achieving this: whether it’s Mid Sommar’s subtly refined flavour with dill and lemongrass, the oriental and exciting taste of Taxi Marrakech with curcuma and lemon, the classic seasoning with sea salt and black pepper for the Cannon Ball flavour or El Matador’s sweet spicy chili and tomato flavour. With Wildcorn, Rejne, Max and Tobias want to change the consumer’s awareness when snacking, but in a way that includes “fun and sustainability”, Tobi adds. Besides constantly refining the popcorn recipes, Wildcorn has also included the further development of a recycling concept to its agenda. By 2019, the founders plan to have increased the degree of recyclability of Wildcorn packaging up to 90 to 95 percent. For an even more sustainable production, Wildcorn makes up for its corn consumption at a ratio of 1:1. In cooperation with Mellifera e.V. and the Netzwerk Blühende Landschaft (Blossoming Landscape Network), Wildcorn has founded an initiative to protect biodiversity and honeybees. For every kilo of corn harvested, Wildcorn takes care to provide a blossoming flower strip on a correspondingly large area of arable land. This means: more corn consumption leads to more wild nature including blossoming flower strips. The company is also a member of the Interessengemeinschaft FÜR gesunde Lebensmittel (Interest Group FOR Healthy Food). Wildcorn not only tastes good, but at the same time does a good deed by using sustainable working methods and through their active commitment.

It wasn’t clear from the beginning of the trio’s professional careers that they would one day design a snack brand of their own. While Tobias began his career as a sommelier, Rejne gave up his studies in art history and pursued a career in advertising and brand strategy for the next 20 years. His involvement in a project for the company “Bionade” and building up his own organic coffee brand – almost by accident and more or less on the side – cleared his path into the food industry. Early on Max, who in the past was involved in founding the company "Bonativo", realised: “Failure is not a bad thing if you get up again, learn from it and continue to go on.” A strong will, idealism and an equally large portion of naivety enables the trio to question pretty much everything at any time and then to start rethinking in completely new directions. According to Rejne, Max and Tobias, passion, perseverance and determination are important qualities that lead to success in the start-up industry. But a pinch of self-irony, fun at work and the ability to take failures with a sense of humor and then learn from it is an essential part of the bigger picture for them as well.

Their families and friends are their biggest supporters and consider themselves among the biggest Wildcorn fans. “Our family and friends were the ones that made this entire journey possible in the first place,” Rejne says gratefully. The three founders never played together in the sandbox as people often assume they would have. On the contrary: it was not until they were introduced to one another by friends and former colleagues only a few years ago. “In 2016, a friend came up to me and asked: ‘You do something with food, don't you?’ A little later Rejne joined me in my kitchen and we developed the first recipes,” says Tobi in recollection of Wildcorn’s early days. And Max agrees: “Wildcorn is a fine example regarding the power of personal and professional networking”. Something that all three of them have in common is their passion for salty snacks and their will to change the culture of snacking. “It's not always easy to arrange your business with your private life. Mainly, because as a founder you find yourself always in working mode – also outside the office,” explains Max about his daily work routine as a start-up entrepreneur. “But no matter how difficult the tasks may be, I have never ever loved to come to an office as much as to this one,” Rejne adds.

Together with their team, which currently consists of six people, the Wildcorn boys have already achieved a lot: in the first half of 2018, Wildcorn has already doubled its annual turnover from the previous year. Rejne, Max and Tobias are taking up on this development: “We want Wildcorn to become an established snack brand throughout Germany and beyond. Starting with popcorn and then with everything else that is buzzing around in our heads”.