Chipeño included in the Brezelkönig product range
Horw - Brezelkönig has added Chipeño to its product range. Alongside ketchup, mustard and cocktail sauce, the subsidiary of the convenience food specialist Valora has been offering the first sauce made by the Lucerne-based start-up since the beginning of April.
Chipeño has secured a new cooperation partner: Since the beginning of April, customers of the Valora subsidiary Brezelkönig can also adorn their hot dogs with Chipeño, in addition to the traditional choices of ketchup, mustard and cocktail sauce.
The company, which was founded in 2018 and is based in Horw in the canton of Lucerne, has already come a long way before taking this next step in its business journey. The three founders underestimated just how difficult it would be for a small startup to make it into retail stores alongside products made by global brands such as Heinz and Thomy. According to an article published by the newspaper «Luzerner Zeitung», the three founders, namely Samuel Graf, Thamon Duss and Kevin Lustenberger, initially sold their sauces «to every restaurant we could think of», as Graf explains.
Six years later, their first sauce - the Original – is available at major retailers throughout Switzerland. According to the information, the company records annual sales amounting to a low six-figure number of units.
At Migros or Coop, a 300-milliliter bottle of Chipeño Original costs 6.50 Swiss francs. «If we sold one million 500-milliliter bottles, the unit price would be lower», Graf explains. «But retailers want smaller bottles, and we haven’t quite got there yet in terms of sales». However, sales are moving steadily in the right direction, although they «haven't exploded in recent years».
Moreover, the price of waxy maize, which is used instead of egg in the Plant Based variant, has reportedly increased 40-fold due to the war in Ukraine, while the bargaining power of retailers is additionally said to squeeze the company’s profit margins. Nevertheless, in the near future, Chipeño will seek to strengthen its presence in the Swiss gastronomy sector and gain a foothold in the neighboring markets of Germany and Austria.
