Insect burger start-up acquired by Kupfer Innovative Food

Bugfoundation announces via its social networks that it has been sold to a subsidiary of the Kupfer family business seven years after it was founded.

Since 2014, Baris Özel and Max Krämer have been campaigning for insects to be allowed to be processed into food in Germany. It has been approved since 2018 and the two have been selling burgers made from buffalo worms with their start-up Bugfoundation. They have now sold their company to Kupfer Innovative Food, a subsidiary of the family business Kupfer from Ansbach. The Bugfoundation brand will be added to the company's product range; Kupfer Innovative Food was previously a sales partner for the alternative burgers. The Ansbach-based company also invested in Bugfoundation together with the PHW Group, to which Wiesenhof belongs.

Bugfoundation announced the takeover on social media and wrote that its brand "will remain in professional and dedicated hands". Furthermore: "We look forward to everything that comes! Stay tuned."

After two years of development, Bugfoundation's burger was first available in Brussels restaurants in 2018, before making its debut at the Green Week in Berlin. The product was only relaunched this year. The burger was previously available to buy at Rewe and Penny, according to the start-up in 4,000 stores in Germany.

Kupfer is a family business that mainly sells meat and sausage products, while the subsidiary that Bugfoundation is taking over offers vegan alternatives under the Loz Veganoz brand.