Vegan fast food for everyone

Yuicery sells healthy and vegan meals. The Stuttgart-based start-up relies on branches, including with the help of a soccer goalkeeper. We tested one of the restaurants.

"They didn't take me seriously," says Yuicery founder Oliver Neuzerling about his idea to set up a vegan restaurant chain. "Old colleagues said to me: you can't be offering bowls now, completely without meat and fish." Yes, that's exactly what Neuzerling did and has been quite successful. Yuicery already sells vegan food in five branches, three of which are in Stuttgart, one in Cologne and the newest in Vienna. The branch in Austria is the first to be operated as a franchise. An acquaintance of Neuzerling runs the store.

The concept of the Yuicery "stores", as Neuzerling calls his vegan restaurants, stands out from the competition: an open kitchen area, tiled in black, with artwork and neon lettering on the walls and plants on another. Music is playing and the lights are dimmed. "We want to offer healthy food in an appealing ambience," says Neuzerling. Yuicery wants to offer a "Starbucks feel" for vegan restaurants. Unlike the competition, guests should not just spend a quick lunch break here, but feel at home. "The store concept is not old-fashioned at all. After corona, we should meet and sit together in restaurants again," Neuzerling hopes.

Test meal in the Cologne store: the staff take time for every customer and are very friendly. Anyone who has never been there before is given an introduction to the Bowl concept and an explanation of the individual ingredients. However, this may mean that you have to wait a little while for your food.

Just under 20 euros for a large bowl and a drink

Yuicery offers ready-made bowls, but you can also choose your own: a base, either salad, rice or quinoa, plus vegan meat alternatives, vegetables, fruit, grains and sauces. It's worth trying out the vegan meat substitutes. For two euros more, you can get vegan chicken or pulled pork, both of which taste deceptively real and excellent. Other ingredients on the list: vegan cheese, edamame, seaweed and mango. In addition to savory bowls, Yuicery also offers sweet ones. Unfortunately, the ingredient lists are only in English. During the test, the employee at "Flax Seeds" didn't know straight away that it was linseed.

In the test, the bowl tasted fresh and very natural, with little in the way of flavor enhancers, but also a little bland. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the bowl is homemade or the sauces don't have enough kick. However, the large portion does fill you up for a long time. However, you have to pay just under 20 euros for a meal consisting of a large bowl and a smoothie. The smoothie is freshly prepared and tastes homemade. However, 6.40 euros for this alone is a bit steep. You can get both the bowl and the smoothie cheaper from the competition. What's more, at least in Cologne on Friesenwall, it's close by. Neuzerling hopes that prices will soon fall as more and more customers come by. He advertises: everything fresh, everything vegan. In fact, Yuicery is relatively alone in the market for purely vegan bowl restaurants. If an animal-free diet is important to you and you don't feel like asking every product whether it really is vegan, then Yuicery is the right place for you.

The history of Yuicery is full of twists and turns. The brand was founded in 2014 by a Munich-based entrepreneur, at the time as a distributor of juice fasting cures, which were making their way from the USA to Europe. However, the idea flopped. Just one year later, Neuzerling, a trained hotel specialist, joined the company with new ambitions. His dream had always been to have his own store. "I wanted to create a hotspot where you could get healthy products." He takes over the juice factory from the founder and immediately expands the product range. Yuicery now also offers vegan supplements. The first branch opened in Stuttgart three years ago. The cold-pressed juices and supplements are still available online and in stores today. However, Neuzerling has sold most of his shares in the supplements company, partly so that he can invest the money in the stores.

Yuicery is expanding - soon with an investor?

Yuicery is not yet making a profit. Business is going best at the main store in Stuttgart. The store manages around 300 to 350 customers a day. Yuicery is already generating an operating surplus there. So far, the stores have been financed purely from loans and own funds; Neuzerling is only planning to work with an investor if there are 25 or more stores. Tim Boss, a Cologne native and currently a soccer goalkeeper for third-division club Wehen Wiesbaden, is also involved in the Cologne FIliale. However, more and more stores are to be operated as franchises, as with the first store in Austria. Yuicery receives a share of the turnover.

Neuzerling has big plans for the future. "Our focus is now fully on franchising, growth and finding investors." Two new stores in Constance and Bietigheim-Bissingen are already planned for the beginning of next year, but if Neuzerling has his way, Yuicery will soon go European. He would like to see his brand in Amsterdam, Brussels, Oslo, Stockholm and Luxembourg.