Planning a trip to Germany requires a balance of historic city centers, scenic alpine drives, and efficient travel. This itinerary, based on a successful family road trip through central and southern Germany, provides a structured flow for first-time visitors or those looking to cover major highlights in 10 days.

Trip Overview & Logistics

This route is best executed via rental car to allow for flexibility between smaller towns like Quedlinburg and Bamberg. The schedule is designed for early starts to maximize daylight and avoid peak crowds at major attractions.

Itinerary Table

Key Destinations & Insights

1. The Rustic Start: Cabins at Bremer Teich and Quedlinburg.

We began our journey immersed in nature, staying in a cabin at Camp Bremer Teich in the Harz region. There is something uniquely grounding about waking up at 7:00 AM in the next to lake shore. Living in the cabin allowed us to slow down before the heavy driving began. We spent our first full day (Friday the 20th) enjoying the rain. The wooden cabin had everything we needed including TV, wifi, 3 people’s bed, small kitchen, and toilet.

On Saturday morning trip to Quedlinburg. Walking through Quedlinburg felt like stepping back into the Middle Ages, with its narrow cobblestone streets and over 1,300 timber-framed houses still standing strong. We were the only non german tourists there so the place is well hidden and preserved in its original form. I speak German so I could navigate everywhere and we also found an asian restuarant for vegetarian meal.

While many tourists flock to Berlin or Munich, towns like Quedlinburg and Bamberg offer authentic medieval experiences. Quedlinburg is famous for its 1,300 half-timbered houses. Bamberg, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is known for its unique “Old Town Hall” situated in the middle of a bridge and its traditional smoked beer (Rauchbier).

2. Bamberg

The Next stop was Bamberg. We drove there on Sunday morning.

We spend a day in Bamberg walking. It has such a beautiful stream and over that you can walk or sit at cafes and have food while natural water flowing next to you.

3. Munich & The Bavarian Alps

Monday we drove to Munich city and saw the famous square and cathedral from outside in the evening. There is nothing much to see in Munich otherwise.

Next day we left for Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It’s the highlight of the trip.

We stayed here in Gastof Fraundorfer.

Visiting the Zugspitze is a trip highlight. Arrive by 07:00 to catch the first cable car and avoid lines. After descending, the Eibsee lake at the foot of the mountain offers a turquoise-water circuit walk that takes about an hour.

4. Cross-Border Leg (Salzburg & Prague)

Munich serves as a perfect launchpad for Salzburg (approx. 1.5–2 hours drive). Note that driving into Austria requires a “Vignette” (toll sticker), and driving to Prague requires a Czech vignette. Early morning departures (04:00–05:00) are recommended to beat traffic on the Autobahn.

Next day we walked around Prague city and enjoyed the food. Don’t miss the cute cafes but make sure you don’t overpay. DYOR.

We walked over charles bridge but it was too crowded and isn’t as sexy as it seems in videos.

Sunday morning we left for Berlin from Prague.

Way back to Berlin we stopped at Dresden town. It’s a cute little town 2 hrs from Berlin.

I recommend stopping by at Edelweiss cafe.

Accommodation Recommendations

• Munich: Leonardo Hotel Munich City Olympiapark (Good access to the Olympic park and transit)
• Salzburg: Leonardo Hotel Salzburg City Center.
• Bamberg: Altstadthotel Molitor (Central location for walking the old town).
• Garmisch: Hotel & Gasthof Fraundorfer.

Essential Travel Tips

• Early Checkouts: The itinerary utilizes 04:00 AM checkouts for long driving legs (e.g., Munich to Salzburg). This ensures you arrive at your next destination by breakfast, effectively gaining a full day of sightseeing.
• Parking: In historical centers like Bamberg and Salzburg, park in “Park and Ride” (P+R) lots on the outskirts or ensure your hotel provides dedicated parking, as street parking is restricted.
• Sundays in Germany: Most grocery stores and pharmacies are closed on Sundays. Plan your “Drive to Berlin” leg accordingly and ensure you have snacks/supplies beforehand.

Top 10 tips on writing a winning CV to secure a job in Germany in 2023? (Template Included)

👋 Hi, my name is Tejas, and I am writing this article to address the many applicants who have been asking me to critique their CVs. This article will provide you with my experience-based tips for crafting a winning CV that will help you secure a job in Germany 🇩🇪. An editable Google Doc template is linked at the end of the article.

I did a year long job hunting and made tons of mistakes and found what works for crafting a winning CV (at least for me 😅). The insights are more than just my experience as I was consulted by many external HR consultants and was actively seeking feedback from the companies after every rejection. I got 26 rejection from my 40 applications. Many times I got rejected in final stage so it was really stressful and self doubting for me. Anyways, let’s jump to the foundation of a how job application in germany is different and then to the tipps.💪

Are German CVs different/special? How? Why?

Your CV is like a marketing flyer to sell yourself, and in marketing, you need to understand who your end consumer is. German companies are accustomed to reading simple single-column CVs. Unlike the US format, they can be longer than one page but no more than two pages. Nowadays, CVs are first read by an Application Tracking System (ATS) due to the large number of applications. Therefore, you should ensure that your CV is both machine-readable and human-readable. If you are getting rejections within an hour or a day, it is generally the ATS rejecting you, and there is a high chance that no human ever read your CV. It hurts! 😑

You don’t get a chance to explain your CV to a manager, so you need to be super clear in conveying what you have achieved and what skills you have in plain simple sentences. German CVs have left-justified text. They do have a photo of a candidate, but some companies ask not to include it.

🔥 Top 10 Tipps to craft a winning CV:

🔟 ️Format: 📄

Your CV should be in a single-column format, and avoid using fancy designer CVs. Stay away from designer CVs crafted by various websites, as they can be confusing for ATS to extract information and unclear for a person to interpret.

The simple format gives a proper flow to read the CV from top to bottom. It provides chronological highlights of your life that a reader can connect with as they follow the CV. It should only be in black and white and not background or other font colors. Create a CV in Google Docs so that you can change things on the fly and also ask other people to comment on it. You can send me your CV to get a new perspective. I will read and point out common mistakes so you get less rejections and more interview calls. Contact me on Linkedin by clicking here.

9️⃣ Structure: 📄

Your CV should start with a maximum 50-word summary (if you want to summarize).

Your first section should be Work Experience. It should start with the recent job title, duration, location, and 3–4 bullet points about what you were doing, what you achieved, and what impact it created for the company.

The next section should be Education, which starts with chronologically reverse degrees. You should only include degree courses or e-learning courses that are longer than 6 months. I would not suggest adding irrelevant certificates here. Write the master’s degree followed by bachelor’s and high school grades. Include grades, years, and the university with location. It will play a role in knowing how diverse is your experience.

The last section should be Activities. This section can include your extra achievements, courses, soft skills, languages, and software, interests, and hobbies (if you have any). Your hobbies and interests should be included in a CV to give an overall perspective of yourself as an employee because you are not only hired to do a job, but you are also a part of the team, so you should fit culturally too.

You can also use this section to show your work portfolio by linking it to an external site. For example, if you have designed a website or written code and you want to show that, you can link to your Behance or GitHub repo.

So follow this sequence:

1. Summary (Optional)
2. Work Experience
3. Education
4. Activities

✔️ Pro Tip: Try to write impact in terms of saving money, generating revenue or saving time.

8️⃣ Use KISS Framework: 🫶

Keep it simple, stupid! (KISS) Sentences are highly appreciated than jargony ones. Give your CV to someone outside of your industry and ask them to read it. If they don’t understand the sentences, simplify them. Remember, you won’t get a chance to explain your CV to an HR representative who may not be familiar with your industry.

✔️ Pro Tip: Ask ChatGPT to simplify the sentence for you. Don’t use ChatGPT to write complete sentence because at the end the interviewer wants to know your writing skills too. You can use Forefront.ai to user ChatGPT 4 for free and ask HR manager persona to critique your CV.

7️⃣ Quantify your achievements with numbers 🔢

It’s important to showcase your achievements in a quantifiable way, as it gives your future manager an idea of your ability to convert qualitative accomplishments into quantitative terms. This shows that you have a number-oriented perspective in life, and are capable of measuring and improving performance.

Examples:
❌: I was responsible for sales in North region and closed big deals.
✅: I was responsible for sales in North Europe. Closed deals worth 10M€ in the first 6 months of my job and achieved the best salesman award.

Make sure to provide a logical explanation of how you achieved those numbers. During an interview, the interviewer is likely to ask you how you approached a problem and how you achieved those results.

6️⃣ Length: 📐

Make sure you do not write your experiences in more than 4 bullet points. Total CV length should not be more than 2 pages.

.Make sure you do not write your experiences in more than 4 bullet points. Total CV length should not be more than 2 pages.

Why?

HR people do not have a lot of time to read essays. Save their time and also show your efficiency and space saving mindset by being concise. Your CV is a reflection of how you work and think in real life. I have seen 5 page CVs of freshers and 2 pager CVs of directors with 20 years of experience. If they can do it, you can do it. Save space and time of the reader.

5️⃣ Be relevant 🎯

I used to fill the pages by writing everything I did in my previous job because I thought the company should know how much I can do. It was totally wrong. A company is hiring you for a specific job. You have small set of tasks that you need to perform. You just need to provide relevant experience to the job description to convince the company that you can perform the job. May be a little more to show that you can do the job and XYZ too but it should still stay relevant and not too off the requirements.

✔️ Pro Tip: Your CV should be tailored to the job description. Avoid going above 700 words and don’t write more than 1000 words in any case.

4️⃣ Use words than signs: ✍️

It is better to describe things than to leave at the other person’s interpretation. In the following image, you can see that the language level is shown by filled dots. What exactly is the value of each dot? Are 5 dots supposed to mean mother tongue? If yes, is this person speaking mother tongue level German, Hindi and English?

An ATS system will not understand your dots or graphs and will keep the value empty. You are at the mercy of the ATS here.

It is always a good idea to make it idiot proof. This brings clarity and reduces ambiguity.

✔️ Pro Tip: Indicate a language fluency by beginne, business fluent and mother tongue level and a software skills by beginner, intermediate and advanced level.

3️⃣ Acronyms: 🔤

There is a high chance that you are using acronyms from your industry which may be unfamiliar to the reader and can only be interpreted by the hiring manager. Sometimes, English short forms are not self-explanatory for Germans, as they are used to the German language. Instead of using an acronym, spell out the term in full the first time you use it, and then use the acronym in parentheses afterwards. Some exceptions for widely used acronyms are MBA, PhD in the education section, SLA for sales roles, and SEO for marketing, etc. They are expected to be known by everyone.

✔️ Pro Tip: Try to limit yourself for up to 5 acronyms in the entire CV.

2️⃣ Hyperlink Contact Info: 🔗

The CV should have clickable links to your Linkedin, mobile number, email and company websites. I would recommend you to format the hyperlinked text just like a normal text because it feels smooth while reading but still works as intended. (shown below)

One reason to hyperlink is that sometimes ATS systems require your Linkedin profile and it would fetch directly from the CV. Also, it makes it handy to click on email or number to contact you directly.

✔️ Pro Tip: Hyperlink email id with “mailto:youremail@gmail.com” and “callto:+4912345678978” so that whenever a person clicks on it, it opens in mail app or call app directly.

1️⃣ Match Keywords: 🔎

It’s a good idea to think like an SEO manager when crafting your CV. After submitting your application, the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) will scan your CV to see how many keywords match the job description. While you shouldn’t force matches, it’s beneficial to try and match as many keywords as possible. You can use websites like jobscan.co to paste your CV and Job Description (JD) to see how many matching keywords both texts have. The website suggests that a 70% match is ideal, but I believe that a 50% match is sufficient. The optimal match percentage also varies depending on the company’s size. If you’re applying to a company like Amazon, it’s crucial to aim for a high match percentage. However, if you’re applying to a local company, the pool of applicants is smaller, so it’s less critical.

It’s important to use your common sense and not obsess over the matching percentage. Remember, this is just an extra layer of fine-tuning your CV. Nonetheless, it has worked for me in increasing my interview-to-application ratio. I think this step will increase your interview ratio drastically.

Bonus tip: ➕1️⃣

Your nationality might play a role too as the companies have to sponsor your visa and not all companies have manpower, knowledge and budget to do that. Please include that in your CV.

If you have read till here, congratulations 👏 you have got my months of experience in a few minutes. Feel free to get in touch with me via Linkedin. I will share a tip with you on how to increase your chances of getting hired by 3x.

Click Here to copy my CV template in Google Docs.

Click Here to get my help.

We want to collaborate with Senior Care services in Berlin, Germany for selling homemade food and for that we crafted this email.

Structure:

1. (Salutation)
2. Introduction 1 sentence + why are you contacting.
3. Intro about business with numbers to gain trust.
4. Address possible first objection already. In my email hygiene is a concern so I addressed by saying how we tackle it.
5. (Social Proof) Tell that others like you are already liking our service and they told us about (the problem you are solving).
6. That is why I am writing this email to help you. + Offer
7. (CTA) Wanna talk? Closing.

Examples:

English (Translated):

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am Tejas from HomeMeal and I would like to introduce you and your seniors to some new, fresh and delicious food.
HomeMeal is a marketplace for authentic, homemade food cooked from home by Berliners. We connect 5000+ families with 150+ chefs and have sold more than 100,000 meals to Berlin neighborhoods. All of our chefs have to follow all the regulations like any restaurant — they have business licenses, have to follow HACCP and their kitchens are unannounced by food inspectors.
We are very popular with the slightly older clientele and get very positive feedback from them… but also feedback that good and affordable food is very often problematic to find for this target group.
That’s why I’m writing this email to talk to you about the possibilities — to provide your patients with home cooked meals on a regular basis. They can simply reheat and eat the meals by their own too.
Would you or someone on your team have time to make a quick phone call in the next few days?
I look forward to hearing from you,
Tejas

German (Original):

Sehr geehrter Damen und Herren,
Ich bin Tejas von HomeMeal und möchte euch und euren Senioren gerne etwas neues, frisches und leckeres Essen vorstellen.

HomeMeal ist ein Marktplatz für authentisches, hausgemachtes Essen, das von Berlinern von Zuhause aus gekocht wird. Wir verbinden 5000+ Familien mit 150+ Köchen und haben mehr als 100.000 Mahlzeiten an Berliner Nachbarschaften verkauft. Alle unsere Köche müssen allen Vorschriften wie in jedem Restaurant folgen — die haben Gewerbeanmeldung, müssen HACCP folgen und deren Küchen sind von Lebensmittelkontrolleuren unangemeldet kontrolliert.

Wir sind bei der etwas älteren Kundschaft sehr beliebt und bekommen von ihnen ein sehr positives Feedback… und aber auch Feedback, dass gutes und erschwingliches Essen für diese Zielgruppe sehr oft problematisch zu finden ist.

Deswegen schreibe ich diese E-Mail, um mit euch über die Möglichkeiten zu sprechen — ihre Patienten regelmäßig mit hausgemachtem Essen zu versorgen. Solche, die sie damals oft alleine gekocht und gegessen haben.

Hätten Sie oder jemand aus eurem Team in den nächsten Tagen Zeit, um ein kurzes Telefonat mit uns zu machen?

Ich freue mich von Ihnen zu hören,
Tejas

Finally! The festival season is here. At HomeMeal we are giving you a chance to try something new and authentic that you haven’t tried before. May be it’s a right time to host a party on this weekend or gift a high quality meal treat to your best buddy.

Use the code BLACKFRIDAY in the app to avail the 10€ discount.

How to use it?

Step1: open the App and click on Profile

Step 2: Click on Featured Cook

Step 3: Enter the code BLACKFRIDAY

Enjoy 🥳

Terms and conditions:

• It is only valid for once per device.
• You can order pickup meals and delivery meals which have online payment. Pre-order request meals are not allowed.
• You need to have minimum order size 30€.
• The code is valid till Sunday after the Black Friday.
• HomeMeal reserves right to discontinue the campaign without any notice.

Black Friday Deals on HomeMeal 2022 was originally published in HomeMeal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Click on each dish to go to the app and know more about it.

Download the app Click Here and get 15€ OFF on your first 3 orders.

Comment your favourite dish and we will try to find a home chef who can offer it.

10 Best homemade dinner dishes for Berliners. was originally published in HomeMeal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you are living in Berlin, you might know that there are a plenty of services available to deliver food from existing restaurants. HomeMeal is the first (and only) service to allow home chefs to cook the food at home and deliver it too.

So far we have been delivering meals on pre-order basis. You had to order meals a day (max 7 days) in advance and get them delivered in the evening on selected days. The food was cooked at the same day and delivered as ready to heat condition.

We talked with hundreds of top customers and figured our what they want. The most asked feature was to get the homemade food delivered on the same day.

From Wednesday 16th November, you can order your dinner and get it on the same day on HomeMeal app.

Find the section

All you have to do is to open the app and check our “Get it delivered Today section” as shown in the image below. This section will be the first on your screen.

This section allows a user to order the selected dishes for dinner till 16:00.

After 16:00 this section will be invisible and you will be able to book the orders for the next days only.

Clicking on See All button will expand it and show you all the dishes.

Select the dishes

Select the dishes shown in selection screen.

Add your meals to cart.

Got to the checkout page and finish your order by paying the total amount.

If you haven’t tried any of the meals from our chefs yet, we have a good reason to do so.

Use the referral code EXPLORE while signing up on the app and get 5€ OFF for first 3 orders (15€ in total).

Click Here to download the app now.

Get It Delivered Today — The most asked meal delivery service in Berlin is here. was originally published in HomeMeal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Here you can find the companies that have this permission. You need to be there.

I asked the road transport authority, what do I need to do if I want to import and sell the scooters in Germany. I got following answer.

Sehr geehrter Herr Suthar,

um Typgenehmigungen zu erhalten, muss ein Unternehmen zunächst den Prozess der Anfangsbewertung durchlaufen. Dafür stellt Ihnen das KBA auf seiner Homepage das „Merkblatt zur Anfangsbewertung (MAB)“ zur Verfügung. Sie finden es auch als Anlage 1 anhängend an dieser E-Mail.

Zusammengefasst:

Die folgenden Unterlagen sind in jedem Fall vorzulegen:

• Ein aktueller Ausdruck eines Registrierungsdokumentes (z.B. Handelsregisterauszug) als Nachweis für die Rechtsidentität im Original oder als amtlich beglaubigte Kopie.
• Ein Nachweis für das installierte QM-System zur Sicherstellung einer gleichbleibenden reihenweisen Fertigung. Dieser Nachweis kann durch eine der folgenden Möglichkeiten erbracht werden:
• Eine Begehung des Unternehmens und anschließende Erstellung einer CoP-Auskunft. Diese kann durch einen Mitarbeiter des KBA oder durch einen unserer externen Partner erfolgen. Eine Aufstellung der externen Partner finden Sie in der Anlage 3 zu dieser Mail. Wenn Sie eine Begehung durch das KBA selbst wünschen, so benötigen wir den Vordruck 5.2 des MAB ausgefüllt.
• Die Vorlage eines geeigneten QM-Zertifikates nach ISO 9001–2008. Es wird anerkannt, wenn es von einer von uns benannten Zertifizierungsstelle erstellt wurde und die beantragten Genehmigungsobjekte enthält. Eine Liste der vom KBA benannten Zertifizierer finden Sie in der Anlage 2 zu dieser Mail. Die genehmigungsrelevanten Anforderungen (GRA) müssen durch eine CoP-Auskunft (erstellt vom Zertifizierer) nachgewiesen werden. Der Nachweis kann über den Vordruck 5.3 des MAB aufgeschoben werden.
• Bei bereits erfolgter positiver Anfangsbewertung durch eine andere Genehmigungsbehörde innerhalb der Europäischen Union durch ein Statement of Compliance (SoC) der entsprechenden Genehmigungsbehörde.
• Den ausgefüllten und unterschriebenen Vordruck 5.1 des MAB für die Selbstauskunft.

Wenn Sie als Hersteller nicht selbst fertigen, sondern einen Fremdfertiger beauftragen wollen, benötigen wir zusätzlich die Erklärung(en) zur Herstellereigenschaft. Dafür senden Sie uns bitte den ausgefüllten und unterschriebenen Vordruck 6.1 oder 6.2 des MAB zu.

Sollten Sie einen Bevollmächtigten oder Zustellungsbevollmächtigten wünschen, wäre uns das ebenfalls durch die Vordrucke 8.1 bis 8.4 des MAB anzuzeigen.

Für den Fall, dass eine Gebührenübernahme durch eine andere Stelle als den Genehmigungsinhaber (eingetragen im Vordruck 5.1 des MAB) selbst stattfinden soll, muss dies durch die übernehmende Stelle mit dem Vordruck 8.5 des MAB bestätigt werden..

Alle erforderlichen Vordrucke und Dokumente sind uns im Original per Post zuzusenden.

Nach erfolgreich abgeschlossener Anfangsbewertung erhalten Sie vom KBA eine entsprechende schriftliche Bestätigung. Sie haben dann die Möglichkeit, Typgenehmigungen beim KBA zu beantragen.

Hierzu sollte unbedingt der im MAB enthaltene Vordruck 9.1 “Antrag auf Erteilung einer Typgenehmigung” verwendet werden.

Wir empfehlen Ihnen am elektronischen Dokumentenaustauschsystem E-Typ teilzunehmen. E-Typ ist ein Dokumentenaustausch mittels serverbasiertem System. Vom KBA wird auf Antrag ein Zugriff auf das System E-Typ für die jeweiligen Nutzer (Hersteller, Technische Dienste) eingerichtet. Die Zugangsdaten werden den Teilnehmern anschließend übermittelt.

Die Übertragung der Dateien ist sicher. Der Zugriff erfolgt über das Protokoll HTTPS, d.h. in verschlüsselter Form. Auch das Übersenden von sehr großen Dateien ist möglich. Arbeitet ein Nutzer mit mehreren Partnern (z. B. ein Hersteller mit verschiedenen Technischen Diensten) im Typgenehmigungsverfahren zusammen, wird die Geheimhaltung der Dokumente durch Vergabe entsprechender Berechtigungen sichergestellt.

Um die Teilnahme zu beantragen, ist der Vordruck 9.2 des MAB auszufüllen.

Bei Fragen können Sie sich gerne an die Kolleginnen und Kollegen wenden, wir haben dazu die Servicerufnummer + 49 461 316 2422 und das Servicepostfach 422@kba.de eingerichtet.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt

Abteilung Typgenehmigung

Sachgebiet 422

24932 Flensburg

Internet: www.kba.de

Attachments:

1. Anlage 1 — MAB.PDF
2. Anlage 2 — Zst.pdf
3. Anlage 3 — Externe Partner.pdf

Hope that saves your research time.

contact me: https://t.me/tejassuthar777

Useful Links:

1. https://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/Articles/StV/Roadtraffic/light-electric-vehicles-faq.html
2. https://www.check24.de/e-scooter-versicherung/
3. https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ekfv/BJNR075610019.html
4. https://www.tuev-hessen.de/fileadmin/tuev/Files_PDFs_and_Co/tuevhessen_E-Scooter_Elektrokleinstfahrzeuge_Kundeninformation_10-2019.pdf

Buy and Sell homemade food in Berlin with this app in 2021 (Brief Story)

HomeMealDeal is a marketplace that connects kitchenpreneurs selling homemade food with people searching for high-quality & authentic meals at an affordable price in Berlin.

Berlin is an international city with ex-pats from over 190+ countries. It is possible to find a fancy restaurant at the next corner but it doesn't satisfy the hunger of homemade food. Most of the times, it is not even possible to get your favourite dish which your mom used to make.

How would you feel if someone cooks your childhood dish for you in Berlin?

HomeMealDeal identified this demand during covid-19 lockdowns. The team saw that there is a huge demand for authentic food in the ex-pat community and people are not happy with the restaurant food as it alters the taste. Also, the food is cooked by a chef who is cooking other cuisines too.

Soon after brainstorming the idea, they faced a mammoth roadblock of hygiene. It is natural to be alarmed about the hygiene regulations when you are starting a food business in Germany. The two biggest questions were.

1)Is it allowed to sell homemade food in Germany? 2)How can you follow the hygiene standards?

We went through the pages of EU laws, German laws and all hygiene regulations. We also went to meet Ordnungsamt who enforces hygiene regulations on restaurants. Surprisingly, there is no regulation that forbids the selling of food from the private kitchen. The regulations point out towards handling the food hygienically only.

It is a misconception that you can not maintain those hygiene standards in a private kitchen. One has to do a little investment in equipment or do some modifications in the existing kitchen if needed. We talked for months with Ordnungsamt and finally got the permission to test the idea with our app in Freidenau-Schöneberg district of Berlin.

We started our beta testing in December 2020. Till mid-January 2021, we onboarded 14+ home chefs (a.k.a. Kitchenpreneurs) and 100+ in the waiting list, sold 130+ dishes with over 550+ downloads.

We have 270 active users per week as of 26 January 2021.

So far our marketing budget has been 0€.

Check out the stories of our kitchenpreneurs on our Instagram.

Download our test version now. We are on TestFlight on iPhones.

Challenges are good but if the troubles are created by someone and you are at the receiving end as an organisation, you are equally responsible for the thing. Something similar happened to me during my first journey as a COO.

When I joined the post as an operations executive in MAYVARY, the client was already on board and opportunity seemed so overwhelming that I couldn’t resist the workload. When the time passed gradually, I became aware that the commitments that I was supposed to deliver were far more out of our capacity and present human resources.

What was the challenge?

We were supposed to deliver high-quality social media strategy with image content 4 per week and text articles 2 per month. We were supposed to deliver an entire plan for portraying a person into a brand with his own website and corporate branding with world-class quality.

At that time the status quo was, we were having no designers in house and 1 amateur intern who was trying to do Wordpress site for one event.

What did I do?

As having a background in procurement I thought on “Make or Buy” decision. I segregated the committed parts in mainly three sections on a page.

1. What we can do but should not do? — Outsource
2. What we have to do and couldn’t do? — Find a supplier.
3. What we can do and should do? — DIY

Now for finding suppliers and outsourcing, the problem was it was too costly to get it from Berlin-based agencies and Freelancers. So I turned towards India where I could get the cheapest agencies to design graphics with the understanding of European colours and design mindset.

Fast forwarding, I did scan the market in India contacted costly, cheap, affordable, over-promising and freelancers. Finally, I got a few young guys running a nice graphic design agency.

The next challenge was the operation processes,

How to provide seamless communication and task management that can scale in future with more participants?

The quest of a software war immediate as we jammed much of work with WhatsApp miscommunications and Google Sheets with trillions of google drive links.

I elicited requirements and current process flow on a whiteboard, I established a relationship among each step. Then transformed each step into possible software analogy and made a process flow that can work entirely using software and minimum gates of information passage.

I have been operating the team of Graphic designers, Copywriters and IT developers with 2 main softwares slack and Asana. I personally manage my dashboard and research in Notion and Google Sheets.

I delivered a pile of graphic design work with pre-assigned tasks with deadlines and start date and managed client at the same time by scaling the communication and removing unnecessary steps.

Its all about writing processes on paper > converting into software analogy > finding the right tool to perform them.

How did I manage the cost?

I found only free software up to a certain limit and also used trials.

I found suppliers and using my negotiation skills I kept my prices under the cap with future project promises and retainer contracts which I actually fulfilled.

It was mostly about finding the right resources in the right geographies and take advantage of the currency value gap.

How to convert potential competitors into partners? — A case study

This case study was a part of my recent interview process with an ed-tech platform. The company is producing educational courses for corporate employees and looking for ways to increase the number of courses on the platform. For privacy purposes, I will address the firm as “Company” in this case.

There is always a way to collaborate with your competitor. If you can develop a win-win strategy, everyone will partner as long as you are making money and improving brand image. The list of partners, in this case, are potential competitors too.

Given Business Case:

An e-learning course platform is providing high-quality video courses for corporates employees. They are working on curating and building courses with external content providers (e.g. Agencies, competitors). In a normal research process, they would look for content partners based on a given content topic they have and research accordingly by the search team. Yet, they do need horizontal content partners with portfolios that span different content fields and have high course variety. In the best case, these courses should be ready to upload and match their e-learning standards.

The task is to set up a process and find at least ten potential horizontal content partners for the company by answering the following questions:

1. How would you structure and organize your research to find these content providers? What might be an important criteria for selection?
2. Which partner benefits would you offer to a potential partner or how could we compensate the partner?

Solution

Reading the case I identified the following requirements and tasks.

Requirements:

• Horizontal content partners
• Diverse content fields
• High course variety
• Ready to upload quality
• Matching our standards

Tasks:

1. Define a process for finding partners
2. Define qualifying criteria
3. Suggest potential benefits

The first thing I had to solve was how to find a partner. As shown in the decision tree below, there can be only two ways we find someone. 1) When we search for someone 2) If someone approaches us.

There are multiple ways of how to search for someone/company and where to look for. The following figure is self-explanatory for how to search for a company.

Now one problem we might face is, how can we find newcomers and hidden gems. There is a probability that someone is producing educational courses but not very well known in the network. Google shows results of well-established SEO compliant websites. Also, the new businesses are easier to collaborate with for good exposure.

How to find hidden gems?

I asked some people who are working in the creative field and partnering on a daily bases. I got some insights from them and here are four ways to find newcomers.

1. Word of mouth — By attending the meetups, events, and industry networking events we can find newcomers and hidden gems who are local.
2. Actively engaging in creators’ communities and being up to date with industry news.
3. Backtracking from their Products/Work/Content that we spot somewhere. A new business will market their product and try to make money rather than branding.
4. Checking new company registrations from Handelsregister — Since any new company will be registered there for legal reasons.

Since I have majored in MBA Global Procurement, I had an idea about how the partnership process works. I created the following flowchart for the same.

Qualifying the partners after finding them is very critical. I believe if I can quantify the criteria, it would be a better perspective and reduce the time for me to qualify a partner. I started noting down all relevant criteria and though how can I quantify them. During the process, I found that not everything is quantifiable but I have to consider those things for better decision making. I finally made a list of two types of criteria. 1) Quantitative and 2) Qualitative.

As shown in the table below, I used a weighted point rating system to measure the final result. It is important to quantify but not every criterion is equally important for final decision. Also, what if next time I do the same job but I have a different focus? So I need to introduce the weight of each criterion. As per the table, I can add multiple columns for each potential partner and add weight to each row. Once, I fill the score, I have to multiply it with Weight to get the final number.

I found out 15 potential partners for doing a deal. Refer to following google sheet to get more information.

Finding suitable benefits to offer for partnership:

Any business is predominantly driven by monetary benefits. But there are some hidden favors that can benefit indirectly. E.g. More clients, exposure, brand image. These all will help a company in long term monetary benefit. It seems very lucrative to offer monetary benefit because it is easy but actually it should not be the choice while partnering.

I created following the decision tree to find a suitable benefit that this company can offer to potential partners.

Recommendations

1. The company has potential partners in the UK and Germany. 2–3 potential partners can be a long term supplier and 1 (workshop) can be ready to use course provider.
2. The non-monetary benefits should be preferred over monetary benefits to impose lock-in and switching costs.

Assumptions

1. Horizontal content partners are considered as non-direct competitors. Only companies that are associated with course production are considered and no individuals. (Provided by the company on asked)
2. Partners’ location is global.
3. Standards are assumed as Aesthetic cohesion with the company’s branding, tone, course structure, and video quality.
4. Course variety is considered a variety of topics, course formats.
5. Qualifying criteria are defined by me but scoring each partner on them is dependent on the company.

Final Result

The company was happy with the approach. They asked me for a bottleneck in the process flow.

Where do you see a bottleneck?

Contact me on LinkedIn: Tejas Suthar