Working with Simon and Mikael to help them launch Ö-Chips was enormous fun, and highly valuable to me to learn a lot about the reality of the hospitality, food and beverage scene.
Ö-Chips is a great case of product and business model innovation: take potato chips, add unique flavours based on the beverage you are drinking, and serve the demand from hotels and restaurants to have a great snack for guests that improves the visitor experience!
On top of that, it’s a great chance to sell products at a much higher margin and avoid the cut-throat race to the lowest price on the grocery shelf.
But more importantly, I got to work with a team that just made things work no matter the challenge, and who were selling their idea from day one:
- We need production — no worries, we’ll ship second-hand machines from overseas and set ourselves up within 3 months!
- The pandemic has hit — no worries, we’ll sell chips online!
- We need to get chips up to restaurants in the mountains — no worries, we’ll borrow cars from another startup and drive up ourselves!
- A boutique hotel wants a custom flavour — no worries, we will create a new formulation and get production sorted for you!
Branding and marketing of food products
From a branding and marketing perspective, this is a fantastic example of the importance of unique branding and differentiation: no more boring sour cream and onion flavours, in combination with unique packaging design that lets guests be served with a bowl-shaped package, so they don’t get greasy hands while enjoying their snacks! This took vision and determination from the team to see it all the way through to production and launch.
Bonus: as an advisor, I also got to add acting as a barman extra to my repertoire!
The result
The team launched Ö-Chips at the end of 2019 and blanketed the restaurant and bar scene in their initial launch.
The pandemic then hit, but the team pushed on and survived with sales through alternative channels while people were stuck at home — and even launched their online e-commerce concept “Fredagslyx” (Friday’s treat): luxury snacks delivered straight to your home, even bringing in other local food partners to make a full gift bundle!
Since the end of the pandemic, the team have continued to build distribution nationally as well as a number of partnerships with hotels and new beverage producers.
