Here's another adventure from Germany. The award ceremony for the "Wirtschaftswoche Gründerpreis 2009" was in Munich, so we felt compelled to swing by mymuesli in Passau.
mymuesli took the concept of mass customization in its early beginnings in Germany and applied it to - muesli. Their office and production is nestled between fields and meadows, but they are known widely all over Germany. So we were honored to be invited to visit.
We started right away by looking at their storage and production. Since a box (or in their case capsule) of muesli has a lot more volume than a bar of chocolate, we were impressed by rooms and rooms packed with ingredients for the mixes of the customers. Have you ever read the Duck Tales, with Scrooge McDuck (the rich guy), who goes swimming in his money? The rooms were so full with strawberries and oats and ... it reminded me of the room full of money that McDuck would dive into. Only that of course the supplies at mymuesli were all well packaged and hygienically stored - no one went swimming here.
The production itself was a big mixing station. Unfortunately we arrived there during a break, so we couldn't see how the cereal is actually mixed. But I did learn that all of it is done by hand, and that each capsule is shaken many times to ensure an even distribution of the ingredients (- tricky!).
We sat and talked with the mymuesli founders over tea for a while, about their UK expansion and our US expansion, and how it's like to live and work in Bavaria. We even went to lunch with them with their many interns - to Burger King! (can you say globalization?) Fun times, and I'm looking forward to welcoming Max, Hubertus and Philipp in the US someday - maybe by then they don't only have mymuesli BMWs but also a mymuesli plane ;)
