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Max's Mints start-up of the week

24 September 2019

Max's Mints was the start-up of the week and was interviewed by Sprout. Read the interview below!

Daughter Floor (31) and father Pieter van der Steen (63) are making the peppermint market more sustainable. With Startup of the Week Max's Mints, they have already sold 150,000 organic mints worldwide. “The mint has been the same for 20 years.”

What is Max's Mints?

Max's Mints is a Haarlem brand of vegan, organic mints. The makers rid their production process of artificial pesticides, they do not work with flavorings and gelatin and have their mints packaged in a sheltered workshop in The Hague, where people who are at a distance from the labor market work. The mints are packed in tins, because tin is easily recyclable. The startup currently delivers six different, sometimes very remarkable flavors; from coffee to ginger and from menthol to lime.

 

“We call it mints on a mission,” says co-founder Floor van der Steen. “We hope to make it easier for consumers to make more sustainable choices. Even if we are only talking about a mint, many small choices can make a difference.” Sustainability is “the only way”, says Floor: “If we want to leave a livable world for our children and grandchildren, we have to do it now.”

Who is behind it?

Van der Steen runs the company together with her father Pieter van der Steen. The latter has a lot of experience in the confectionery industry. He was once a director at Sportlife and headed a syrup waffle company. Pieter also led the name change from 'negrozoenen' to 'zoenen'. He had seen organic food as a growth market for some time, but in which product category could he best invest?

 
Daughter Floor could tell him that. The self-proclaimed “sustainability advocate” lived in Italy for some time and discovered the slow food movement there. Once back in the Netherlands, she started working as a buyer at the sustainable supermarket Marqt.

 

Father and daughter decided to start a sustainable confectionery brand together in 2016. “We stood behind the candy shelf and looked at how sustainably people are already producing per product type,” says Floor. “A lot happens with chocolate and cookies, but the mint has been the same for 20 years.” The two worked for a year on a brand of mints that is sustainable, and in 2017 they launched Max's Mints. The startup currently has four employees (2.5 FTE), including the entrepreneurs.

Who is waiting for it?

Max's Mints is located in the Marqt, the Ekoplaza and many health food stores. It is therefore no wonder that the family business primarily focuses on consumers who care a lot about sustainability. At the moment, the mints mainly end up in the shopping baskets of consumers aged 20 to 45 from the Randstad.

 

However, Floor believes that this target group should be much broader: “Mints are an impulse-driven product, so we focus very much on traveling people who go to the museum and the theater. Ultimately, our brand must be in every location where you now see regular peppermint.”

 

If you want to appeal to the broadest possible target group, you can set a price for your product that is not too high. Floor's mints in the regular size cost on average about 2 euros and 50 cents per can, which she says is 15 percent more expensive than other non-sustainable brands. “But we are not a price fighter. I expect this price difference to be so small that people will still buy it.”

How far is Max's Mints?

As mentioned, Max's Mints currently has six flavors of mints on store shelves. The startup offers the cans in three different sizes. Since 2017, the company has sold around 150,000 cans. Floor expects that her company will sell 1 million cans annually in 5 years. Max's Mints is also spreading its wings to other countries. Since the beginning of this year, the brand has also been available in stores in Spain, Luxembourg, Ukraine and Poland. Since this month, the mints are even sold in Dubai and South Korea.

What is the business model?

Max's Mints sells its product to wholesalers, who resell the mints to customers. Customers include both supermarkets and caterers. For their internationalization, father and daughter Van der Steen work together with a distributor, who sells and resells lots in one go. According to Floor, the first reports about consumer sales from abroad are "super positive", although she believes it is still too early to say anything meaningful about foreign sales. Floor does not want to reveal what margin she uses for sales.

Still need money?

Until now, Van der Steen's father and daughter have financed the company entirely with their own money. The company keeps the amount a secret. Floor states that Max's Mints is not immediately looking for an investor, but "maybe it will become interesting in the future". She cannot yet say how much such an investment should be. “The investor should at least have expertise in the industry.” Max's Mints is not yet profitable, but is growing in terms of turnover. The company's turnover last year was around 50,000 euros and Floor expects to reach one hundred thousand euros this year.