von råbowls, neuen anfängen und der frage, was als nächstes kommt
From råbowls to what comes next
When I look back at råbowls today, I don’t first think about stores, products or numbers. I think about how little I knew when I started, how much happened afterwards and how much the company ended up shaping me. In May 2018, while I was still finishing my Marketing Master at the University of Groningen, I opened the first Rå together with Tristan Niclassen. It was called “Rå – økologisk salatbar” and it was a small place in Groningen built around a simple idea: fast food could be fresher, more colorful, more plant-focused and more exciting than what was usually available.
We had no restaurant background and no polished playbook. We learned by doing. We figured out recipes, suppliers, staffing, pricing, customer behavior and daily operations as we went. A few months later, I finished my degree and instead of taking a conventional next step, I decided to continue building the company. That decision changed the direction of my life.
A few years later, we brought the concept to Hamburg. We found a location at Gänsemarkt, worked through permits and construction and eventually opened “Rå – bowls & juices”. Around that time, Ahsan Ansar joined the team. He started as a service employee, but very quickly became someone who could take on responsibility far beyond his role.
Then things started moving fast. We began supplying bowls through GORILLAS to multiple locations around Hamburg, sometimes selling hundreds of bowls per day through that channel alone. We later built a shop-in-shop inside EDEKA Böcker in HafenCity and started supplying additional EDEKA stores across the city. From the outside, this looked like strong growth. From the inside, it felt much more complicated.
The company was expanding faster than our structures were developing. Operational pressure increased, responsibilities became blurred and the relationship with my co-founder deteriorated. By 2022, the situation had become serious enough that I had to question not only how we were running the business, but also what I actually wanted to continue building.
That period taught me one of the most important lessons of my entrepreneurial life: growth and progress are not the same thing. A business can become bigger while also becoming harder to manage, less healthy internally and less aligned with the people who built it. It took me time to understand that. At the time, the instinct was always to keep going, solve the next problem and push through.
Eventually, that stopped working. In 2023, I decided to start again in a different way. I signed the lease for a new råbowls store directly opposite Hamburg Rathaus. This was not simply another location. It felt like a reset. I wanted to take everything I had learned from the previous years and build something more focused, more sustainable and more clearly mine.
In March 2024, we opened råbowls Rathaus. Not long after, Ahsan came back into the business. For me, that meant a lot. He had been through some of the most intense years with us, had stepped away when things became too much, and returned when the company was in a healthier place. Later, he became a shareholder in råbowls GmbH and took on a central role in the company.
By 2025, I realized that I also needed distance. After years of constantly asking what the business needed next, I had to ask myself a different question: what do I need next? That was not an easy realization. Entrepreneurship had shaped a huge part of my identity for years. There was always another operational problem to solve, another opportunity to evaluate, another decision waiting. Stepping away from some of that responsibility felt strange at first, but it also gave me something I had not had for a long time: space.
That space eventually led me to Berlin. In May 2026, I started working as a Startup Coach. Today, I work with early-stage founders who are often exactly where I once was. They have an idea, a lot of ambition, many assumptions and very little certainty about what will actually work.
I help them validate ideas, speak to customers, test products and turn early concepts into real businesses. What surprises me is how often I draw on råbowls when I do that. Not just on the successes, but on the difficult parts too. råbowls taught me that customers often behave differently from what you expect, that growth can expose weaknesses instead of solving them, that operational complexity can become dangerous very quickly, and that the people around you matter just as much as the product itself. It also taught me that sometimes the best decision is not to keep pushing in the same direction.
Those lessons are now part of how I coach other founders. At the same time, something else has started happening. I feel curious again.
I have been thinking a lot about food culture, South America, design, daily rituals and the way people think about energy in modern life. I keep coming back to Yerba Mate and to the question of how a very old South American tradition could be translated into a format that fits naturally into today’s routines.
It is still early. There are producers to speak with, formats to test, packaging decisions to make and plenty of assumptions that may turn out to be wrong. But that is exactly what makes it interesting. I recognize the feeling from 2018.
The difference is that this time I am not starting with zero experience. I am starting with everything råbowls taught me.
When I was younger, I thought entrepreneurship was about building something successful and eventually arriving somewhere. Today I see it differently. For me, entrepreneurship is much more about staying curious, learning from what happened before and being willing to start again when a new idea feels worth exploring.
råbowls is still a huge part of my life and always will be. It is the company that taught me how to build, how to fail, how to recover and how much there still is to learn. Today I get to pass some of those lessons on to other founders, while somewhere in the background another idea is slowly becoming real.
I do not know exactly where it will lead yet, but in 2018 I had no idea where that small salad bar in Groningen would lead either.
from groningen to what comes next.
the first rå opens
22 May 2018 · Tristan Niclassen and I open “Rå – økologisk salatbar” in Groningen.
master finished
September · I finish my Marketing Master at the University of Groningen and keep building Rå.
hamburg begins
We find the Gänsemarkt location at ABC-Straße 52, work through permits and construction, and bring the concept to Hamburg.
rå – bowls & juices opens
20 July · The Gänsemarkt store goes live. Ahsan Ansar joins the team.
200–500 bowls a day
Through GORILLAS, we supply eight locations around Hamburg and suddenly scale far beyond a single restaurant.
rå enters EDEKA
We build a shop-in-shop in EDEKA Böcker HafenCity and supply five additional EDEKA Struve stores.
the difficult chapter
Growth, operational pressure and a serious co-founder conflict force me to rethink what the future of the brand should look like.
råbowls starts again
October · I sign the lease for Große Johannisstraße 19, directly opposite Hamburg Rathaus.
råbowls rathaus opens
22 March · We celebrate the opening of the new råbowls store in the heart of Hamburg.
Ahsan comes back
August · Ahsan rejoins as manager and becomes an essential part of the new chapter.
a reset
The old Rå Hamburg GmbH enters insolvency. Ahsan becomes a shareholder in råbowls GmbH, and I finally take some distance after years of turbulence.
from founder to startup coach
May · I start working with early-stage founders in Berlin and begin using everything råbowls taught me to help other people build.
curiosity is back
And somewhere between South American tradition, food, design and everyday energy, a new idea is slowly beginning to take shape.
