Who are my role models? Musk and Jobs?
No, it’s Kolja and Thanos.
We have never met. You probably never heard of them either.
But I do know what they’ve built. They’ve built KEIT Berlin.
It’s a bakery.
“Who in their sane mind would buy a loaf of bread for 5 euros? When you could buy one for 1 Euro in a supermarket…”
That’s what we were saying in the family when Keit first opened in our neighborhood.
Then they did a tasting. Then we bought one loaf out of curiosity. Then we started buying it for special occasions. Then more and more often until it became our staple.
A few years later, it costs 6.5 euro and we’re still buying it on a weekly basis.
Keit represents everything that we want to achieve when launching Piecraft in Berlin this year.
✅ Quality. I often eat this bread just as it is. No cheese or ham. It’s heaven.
✅ Design. Their neat shop looks like a boutique. Feels so good to shop there.
✅ Simplicity. For the first year they only had one type of bread, only later introducing more variations. Still, it’s a shop with a limited offering.
✅ Staying small. They aren’t opening zillions of locations all over Germany — so far they just have two. This type of quality cannot be scaled easily. Even if they grow, I am sure it will be slow and sustainable.
Maybe there are lots of challenges internally but I cannot see them. What I see is empty shelves at the end of each business day.
The thing is that they are not alone.
There are places like that here and there in Berlin. Bakeries, coffee shops, dessert places…
I call it “the new wave.”
While old-fashioned German bakeries and cafe chains are going out of business sometimes, these places are doing all right, as far as I can tell. Despite the tough market conditions and labor crisis.
They offer a completely next-level experience when it comes to daily staples, like bread, coffee or desserts. They offer some kind of a “luxury” — but it’s not a Porsche. Everyone can afford it, at least occasionally.
And people seem to love it.
So our ambition with Piecraft is to build a new wave coffee shop with pies as our staple. And if we manage to achieve something similar to what Kolja did with Keit, I’ll be…
The. Happiest. Man. On. Earth. 🧑💼🌍
Do you have a favorite new-wave place like Keit in your neighborhood?
