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Yascha Roshani, CEO and Founder of Honest & Rare brings together his entrepreneurial spirit and passion for quality to create an online marketplace for non-mainstream food and drinks. After graduating from the startup accelerator program at Founder Institute, Yascha launched Honest & Rare, offering customers across Europe access to craft beverages and specialty foods directly from independent producers and merchants.

Honest & Rare is a platform that connects thousands of small craft drink producers with discerning customers seeking authentic and distinctive flavors. From beer to wine, coffee, and soft drinks, Honest & Rare showcases the full breadth of the beverage landscape, empowering both producers and consumers alike.

1. What ‘aha’ moment led to the founding of Honest & Rare?

Long time back in 2013 I got into making cocktails. Before going to the first Spirit specialty store, I had no idea how many different styles and products exist. I was used to the assortment of supermarkets. Soon after starting to brew my beer, make liquors, and roast coffee at home, I also got fascinated by the concept of online platforms where you facilitate supply and demand of something that already has a lot of supply and demand. It struck me that there is no online marketplace that does the same for food and drinks, like for fashion, furniture, electronics, hotels and so many more. So, we had to change that.

2. What’s the story behind the name? Very cool, by the way.

The world is being overloaded by mass production and profit-hunting in all forms. From food, drinks, fashion, houses, even to films and series nowadays. The more and cheaper, the better. Everybody can see, feel, and observe how quality is suffering. Luckily, we have a growing trend towards quality, sustainability, ecology, “bio”, vegan, and so on. All the products and the producers behind the products on our platform do reflect these attributes. Honest because there are actual people behind the products. Putting in their ideas, passion, and mostly bare hands into creating those delights. Caring about where the ingredients come from and feeling responsible for their customers. Rare because they are all small-batch products that customers cannot find in every grocery store.

3. What was your drive back then? What change did you want to make?

I wanted and want to support what matters most about eating and drinking: quality and variety. Everyone enjoys discovering new tastes and specialties when traveling and going to restaurants or delicacies stores. But around 80% of food and drink purchases are made in supermarkets where you get the same products all the time. I personally increasingly got mine from small and regional producers. However, it is hard and annoying to always have to drive far. And well, the internet allows you to conveniently discover everything the food & drink landscape has to offer and have it delivered to you. We are still at the beginning of specialty marketplaces. We are making the change of the first online marketplace for non-mainstream food & drinks.

4. How does Honest & Rare's platform significantly contribute to promoting small-batch specialty drinks and supporting independent producers?

Everyone has their strengths. Food and drink producers are there to produce food and drinks. When you think of any normal company, you’d think of a department or person responsible for “sales and marketing”. Small producers usually don’t have that. Additionally, they might lack the financial resources and expertise to navigate through the various options and changing dynamics of selling online. Thus, Honest & Rare is a great solution for local, independent producers to sell their products online – not only to offer their products online where no one would find them but also to be found by customers in their target audience. Shop solutions and online marketing are what we do for the products on Honest & Rare. This way we promote the entire segment of small-batch specialty food and drinks by acquiring new customers and offering Honest & Rare as a convenient alternative for them to discover great tastes apart from the brands everyone knows.

5. How do you scale your business, driving financial success?

Inventory is one key to success for marketplaces. We also see a high correlation between the number of products and sales. We focus on onboarding new sellers and products and facilitating the speed of scaling our offering. For this reason, our main strategic project in 2023 was to expand from drinks to food and drinks; our milestone for this year is to internationalize to be able to scale our portfolio even faster. It’s hard for producers to sell to foreign countries due to tax and customs regulations. Due to our volume and technical expertise, we can enable our sellers to do so. Furthermore, we have a very efficient marketing approach and use organic channels next to paid marketing due to its financial sustainability. For example, SEO is an important channel for us, and we have a high visibility in our industry. Finally, we believe in shopping quality. For this reason, we emphasize our efforts to be the best place to find and buy food and beverages. Both in terms of hygiene factors like website speed, but also shopping convenience like having the most granular filter options or being able to shop by taste.

6. What are potential exit scenarios for investors supporting Honest & Rare?

The food and drinks industry is one of the biggest industries worldwide, with many big multinational players. Exiting Honest & Rare to one of those players is a very tangible scenario. While the online food market is still rather low with below 5% in most markets and mostly concentrated on specialty goods, this share is growing rapidly every year. Eventually established food brands will need to access online distribution channels as well as gain expertise, online sales technologies, and customer data.

7. How do you envision the company's future growth within the craft food and beverage industry?

We are already the biggest online address for specialty food and drinks. Our vision is to become Europe’s main supermarket for everything non-mainstream. We want to enable customers in all European Union countries to discover and buy products from across the continent. This entails allowing producers from all over Europe to offer their products online and ship them to customers who cherish their craft. We have the perfect team setup, the technical expertise as well as the food and drinks expertise to become the biggest and best place to enjoy food and beverage shopping.

8. Do you have a mentor or person you admire in the food or tech industry?

We see so many new brands and products every week, and I honestly admire the creativity and dedication of everyone in the market. It seems like the options to come up with new recipes, creative styles, names, and product designs are endless. In our team, we always wish we could try all of them. But we exceeded the 10,000 products milestone recently, so it looks like this will remain a fantasy.

9. Why should investors consider being part of Honest & Rare's journey?

Food and drinks is the biggest consumer market in Europe and there is yet no online marketplace connecting customers with products. Just like people got used to buying their t-shirts and TVs online, they will increasingly use their phones and computers to buy their food and beverages online. We have developed a complete technical solution together with a strong brand and positioning, particularly for non-mainstream brands and products which will allow us to become a major player in the industry. Our investors will be part of the establishment of Europe’s biggest and best place for discovering food and drinks.

Explore the opportunity on SeedBlink.