A startup from Dr. Oetker relies on healthy frozen meals for “high performers”. Juit actually sells via e-commerce – but now it has also opened a pop-up store in Berlin-Mitte.
Berlin-Mitte, Zimmerstraße 69. The floor shines as flawlessly as the glass facades of the surrounding office complexes. Juit’s pop-up store looks less like a restaurant than a smartly designed gas station for the human engine. The bright colors of the prepared meals scream against the clinical sterility of the facility. Gray floor, blue-gray seating, shiny cabinets. Everything here is designed for efficiency. No waiters asking how you are, no studying the menu for a long time.
Just a huge, metal freezer shelf. I feel like I’ve been transported to the frozen food department of my local supermarket when a friendly employee interrupts the moment. “Have you ever been here?” “No”.
Marc Sarembe
The dish I choose is out of stock. She recommends “peanut chicken” instead. I’ll get the “peanut chicken.” Card to the reader, short beep, done. Of course, payment is made cashless.
Reduce eating to food intake
Juit’s slogan, “Life is too short to eat badly,” is aimed squarely at a generation stuck between self-optimization and a lack of time. It is the next logical step after HelloFresh. But while the cooking boxes replace shopping, many users ultimately fail because of reality: the shriveled organic zucchini in the vegetable compartment and the washing up according to the “quick” 30-minute recipe. Juit promises HelloFresh without regrets. If you don’t feel like the battlefield in the kitchen in the evening, you don’t even have to use a knife.
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Cooking boxes sell a promise: you cook yourself, you learn something, you do it and save yourself a trip to the supermarket. But Juit sells redemption. No bag, no recipe. Without a guilty conscience, flavor enhancers or additives. A look at the back of the packaging reveals that the nutritional values match the concept: 1.6 grams of sugar and 7.1 grams of protein per 100 grams for “chicken curry”. I put the bowl in the microwave – and about eight minutes later, dinner is no longer a plan but a result.
TK for high earners
Behind Berlin’s hip appearance lies concentrated Westphalian economic power. In 2019, Serdar Mansour Azar and Ingmar Knudsen founded “Juit”, although not in the backyard, but under the roof of Dr. Oetker. It’s the Bielefeld giant’s direct-to-consumer lab, an attempt to swap the grubby image of frozen pizza for healthy, flash-frozen, high-tech meals. With Juit, Dr. Oetker in tune with the zeitgeist. Digital sales enable direct customer loyalty without having to go through stationary supermarket chains. Juit is an attempt to combine technological innovation, data analysis and new distribution channels. Juit is, above all, a numbers game. The smallest box with six dishes costs €56.94, which is €9.49 per meal. If you decide on a monthly supply of 30 meals, the price drops to €7.89. Nevertheless, it is comparatively expensive.
Marc Sarembe
In Berlin, Juit goes one step further and launches its first pop-up store. The aim is to make the products visible and to advertise outside of classic e-commerce. Customers can try the dishes on site or come by for lunch. If the concept works, the opening of additional stores is also conceivable.
The main thing is quick
Marc Sarembe
Eight minutes and 30 seconds. This is how long it takes to prepare in the microwave. It’s a strange period of standstill in Berlin-Mitte. “Who’s coming to have lunch with you?” I ask the owner Serdar, whose colleague had spoken to me on the street a few days earlier. His answer fits the environment: “High performer.” I start looking for “high performers” and look around. Behind me a man sits at the table with a woman. They talk about social media and strategies in business slang. Shortly after lunch they quickly leave the shop again, time is of the essence. Then another customer enters the store, dress code business casual, he is greeted on a first-name basis. “This is really the thing at work right now,” he tells the employee and picks up his lunch. Pay quickly and it’s gone. Passers-by repeatedly stop in front of the shop window and stare inside. The concept seems to be polarizing. The eye-catching design moves the environment, which otherwise appears rather dreary.
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Lots of bite, little bang
Eight minutes 30. A “ping” ends the wait. The peanut chicken doesn’t look particularly appetizing at first glance. After peeling off the foil, I encountered a light, pleasant smell of peanuts. The first bite is surprising: the vegetables are crunchy and taste fresh. It’s amazing what effect shock freezing has. The sauce has a pleasant spiciness. The meat is tender and juicy, although the taste is a bit bland. I lack cooking basics; I can’t taste the roasted aromas of a pan. But when combined with the rice, things become harmonious. The portion is decent: Even as a self-confessed glutton, I feel full after lunch, even if I would probably have to choose the more expensive XL version after a hard workout.
Regional, antibiotic-free, healthy – Juit throws around the right buzzwords to soothe the guilty conscience of frozen shoppers. But in the end the question remains: Is this still food or simply fuel? I’ll find out in the evening. Arranged beautifully on a porcelain plate at home, the feeling I had before in the store changes. It no longer feels like a pure nutrient intake to me, but rather it suddenly becomes dinner. Not because it has more love, but because the setting is right and I forget the industrial coldness of the store. Suddenly Juit works for me: as a supply for stressful days, two or three packs in the freezer when training and appointments eat up the evening.
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