When Swiss food start-ups fail  

About 2.5% of foodtech start-ups created in Switzerland in 2021 were liquidated by 2025. EPA/HAYOUNG JEON

Switzerland promotes itself as a global hub for food technology and innovation, but it is not always easy for start-ups to gain a foothold. Swissinfo spoke to four food entrepreneurs who took the plunge. 

Switzerland has topped the global innovation rankings by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for the last 15 years. A large part of its dominance is due to the high number of patents it generates for such a small country. The Alpine nation has the most registered patents per capita, and food technology (foodtech) is the second-most patented sector after pharma.  

Food entrepreneurs benefit from support from the government and industry bodies like Innosuisse and the Swiss Food & Nutrition Valley that help with funding, office space, renting specialised equipment and networking events. Swiss regulations are also up to date when it comes to novel foods like lab-grown meat, and the country is a food-packaging hub with universities and companies working on developing new sustainable packaging. 

Between 2021 and 2025, the number of Swiss foodtech start-ups grew by 65%, but the low-hanging fruit from the post-pandemic boom such as food delivery, meat alternatives and upcycling is no longer up for grabs.  

“Several segments that saw a rapid influx of start-ups in recent years – such as delivery, online grocery and vertical farming – are now rationalising. This naturally leads to market consolidation, as established players increasingly integrate smaller or emerging companies into their growth strategies, and business models being tested more rigorously,” says Giulio Busoni of Milan-based Porsche Consulting and one of the authors of the Swiss FoodTech Ecosystem Report 2025. 

According to the report, about 2.5% of foodtech start-ups created in Switzerland in 2021 were liquidated by 2025. Investment and financing rounds for Swiss foodtech and agritech start-ups have also declined sharply in recent months.  

Even globally, the sector is attracting less venture capital than during the post-pandemic peak, with global investment reaching around $6.2 billion (CHF4.8 billion) in 2025 compared to $49.2 billion in 2021.  

Swissinfo spoke to four entrepreneurs who shared their stories on the challenges of being a food tech entrepreneur in a more competitive marketplace. 

Running up against established heavyweights 

Four-and-a-half years ago, Lukas Rösch dreamed of changing the perception of tofu in Switzerland.  

“It had an image problem because people thought it lacked flavour, had a weird rubbery consistency and is responsible for deforestation in Brazil,” he told Swissinfo.  

Rösch had just finished his business administration studies and was working for a start-up selling vegan products online. It was 2020 and people were spending more money on grocery products because restaurants were closed due to Covid-19 restrictions. He saw an opportunity to create a start-up with his school friend who was making and selling tofu. After trial and error, they came up with a tofu product that they thought would salvage its bland reputation. 

“We developed a product that was very tender and not chewy at all. We combined it with a variety of marinades like BBQ and mustard and sourced locally grown soy,” says Rösch. 

The start-up ENSOY was born, and because the product was produced and launched in eastern Switzerland away from the big Swiss cities like Zurich, it had novelty value and attracted a lot of media coverage. Rösch was able to supply ENSOY tofu to restaurants and eventually managed to build a network of 250 businesses for his tofu. 

Rösch’s goal was to sell his tofu in Switzerland’s biggest supermarkets Migros and Coop. Yvonne Aldrovandi

Rösch invested his own savings to get ENSOY off the ground. After two years in business, he was able to obtain a bank loan on favourable terms to grow his start-up even though he had not raised any venture capital funding.  

ENSOY’s big moment came when the start-up secured a six-month contract to supply Migros, one of the biggest supermarket chains in Switzerland along with Coop. 

“Before I created my start-up, one of the goals was to sell to Migros or Coop because that’s the only way to scale up. I was right, because we more than doubled our production after the Migros contract,” he says.

Rösch hired three new employees to ratchet up production to supply the volumes Migros required. However, the company was still not turning a profit.  

“The more you produce, the more money you should make. But that was not what was happening because our wage costs also went up,” says Rösch. 

After six months, Migros decided not to renew its contract as sales were underperforming and Rösch had to let go three employees. ENSOY had also lost some organic food shops as customers because they were disappointed that the company had partnered with Swiss food giant Migros. The organic stores try to differentiate themselves by selling products their clients can’t find elsewhere and now ENSOY was going to be sold everywhere. The final straw for the start-up was a deal with a new partner falling through at the last minute.  

“Now I was under pressure from the bank. So, it was the moment to say, ‘OK, we tried and we failed’,” says Rösch. 

Rösch had to shut his company down on November 30, 2025, and sell off all the tofu-making equipment. 

“The biggest food retailers in Switzerland, Migros and Coop, have their own in-house food manufacturing or they own manufacturers like the Bell Group and Hilcona. They will always source their tofu from these companies unless I can sell it to them cheaper, which will never be the case. So, finding an investor when there are companies producing tofu at half the price we do was difficult,” he says. 

Rösch estimates he spent about CHF150,000 ($195,000) from his savings and what he borrowed from family. He didn’t pay himself a salary for the first six months and only managed to set aside a maximum of CHF4,000 per month for himself at the end. The gross median monthly wage for a full-time position in Switzerland was CHF7,024 in 2024. 

High quality, low margins 

Another entrepreneur who knows how hard it is to get a food start-up to scale is Céline Neuenschwander. In 2023, she created the food start-up Flow Hummus that delivers plant-based breakfast and lunch bowls across the city of Zurich to offices. She saw an opportunity after the lifting of Covid-19 pandemic restrictions and offices looking for an incentive to bring their employees back to the office.   

“Flow Hummus was built as a digital canteen for offices without a kitchen or fresh food options,” she says. “Companies could order fresh, healthy bowls via a webshop and have them prepared and delivered directly to their workplace.”   

After initial momentum, growth began to slow because of lower profit margins than expected. Neuenschwander faced a structural challenge: producing and delivering fresh, healthy food comes with significantly higher costs.   

“Food is traded like any other commodity,” she says. “Highly processed ingredients that are cheap and have a long shelf life tend to generate the highest margins and returns – though they’re not necessarily the healthiest.” 

Despite a highly streamlined operating model, Neuenschwander decided to wind down the business after nearly three years.

“Yes, it was a pivotal moment in my life, when many things came together. However, I learned a lot – both professionally and personally. Ultimately, it led me to my next step: I joined Venturelab, the largest Swiss accelerator, where I support world-class start-ups on their growth journey,” she says. 

Going global

Mark Essam Zahran studied architecture at university, which got him interested in vertical farming that involves growing plants in vertically-arranged layers to make better use of limited space. He was struck by how much land was needed to grow food.  

“All the cities of the world where most people live take up around 3% of the land mass, whereas 40% of the land is needed to feed everyone. So, in that sense, if you think about architecture as mastering of space, you’ll see that we just don’t use the space that we already have efficiently enough,” he says.  

One stumbling block Zahran sees with many food start-ups is that they focus only on the Swiss market. Gaya Earth

Zahran began his entrepreneurship journey with a vertical farming start-up called YASAI that grew herbs using a soil-free, indoor vertical farming setup. However, the spike in energy prices following the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022 led to loss of investor confidence in the vertical farming business model.   

“We struggled to attract the required capital that was necessary for us to reach economy of scale,” he says.   

At least 15 European vertical farming companies went bankrupt by late 2023 and according to the 2025 AgFunder Global AgriFoodTech Investment Report, investment in novel farming systems (including vertical farms) fell by 53% in 2024 compared to the year before.

In 2024, Zahran sold his company to GreenState, the biggest player in the vertical farming space in Europe and founded a start-up called GAYA Earth in 2025. The company sells cocoa powder blended with functional mushrooms that it pitches as a healthier alternative to coffee. All the founders of GAYA are on their second or third start-up run.    

“Certain things you can’t learn from a book, you need to experience them. And that’s why it’s of great value if you can work with people who have already made their mistakes and gained insights and learnings,” says Zahran.    

One stumbling block he sees with many food start-ups is that they focus only on the Swiss market. According to him, the Swiss market of nine million consumers is very small, highly regulated and captive to the duopoly of the two major supermarkets who can dictate the terms of any partnership.    

“I think Swiss food start-up companies should have a global ambition from the beginning. If you look at successful Swiss start-ups like Planted, they went international rather quickly and that allowed them to grow quicker,” says Zahran.    

Swiss firm Planted manufactures plant-based meat substitutes and has raised over CHF100 million since its founding in 2019.  

Zahran sees a bright future in emerging markets such as the Middle East and Far East where health consciousness is rising. He also sees Swissness as a competitive advantage in these new markets.    

“Consumers there gravitate to Swiss brands because they trust the Swiss quality assurance. That’s why Nestlé was able to establish itself in China with its baby food, and we’re now able to stand on the shoulders of those giants,” he says. 

Branding first, product second 

While some have come to the end of their food startup journey or embarked on a second innings, others are just starting their entrepreneurial journey.  Belgian-Dutch national Sien van Boven, who is based in Lucerne, has just launched Lentl, a start-up that produces a lentil-based spread. She recently won CHF40,000 in a start-up competition organised by the Lucerne Cantonal Bank. The newly minted entrepreneur has decided to work on building a brand before having her product lineup ready to sell.  

Finding a partner who could produce the lentil spread she wanted was not as easy as van Boven thought it would be.   Sien van Boven

“Branding and design are everything. So even before I knew the product and business idea were actually going to work, I invested in the services of a professional design agency,” says van Boven.  

She has moved on from producing lentil spreads in her home and now works with a professional kitchen. Finding a partner who could produce the lentil spread she wanted was not as easy as she thought.  

“You can’t just find a production partner using Google, because the ones you find on Google are usually big manufacturers and they might not really be interested in producing small batches for you. Sometimes you actually need to sell yourself to them, even though you’re the client,” she says.  

Van Boven is aware of the risks of failure and is paying close attention to other companies and founders in the food start-up space.   

“It just keeps you awake. I think you always hope that you’re not going to make the same mistakes. I guess that’s just entrepreneurship – taking a risk and being hopeful.” 

Edited by Virginie Mangin/ts