Sugar-free fruit gum out of Adlershof
Sweets and candy for people with diabetes, diet-conscious parents and calorie-conscious adults
Zveetz stands for zero sugar sweets. Zveetz are the brainchild of Christian Krause, an Adlershof-based business economist Christian Krause. They are the first fruit gums to use the natural sugar substitute erythritol as a sweetener. Krause and his co-founder produce the little, red hearts with cherry flavour using a new manufacturing procedure.
Krause’s sweets are fruit gums, not gummi bears. The classic Haribo gummi bear taste is sweet and has a very characteristic consistency. Christian Krause’s fruit gums are different: they are much softer, have 80 percent less calories and are much less sweet.
Indeed, it could prove difficult to establish Zveetz fruit gum on the German market because the customers’ tastes are so fixated on the classic gummi bear taste. His target group are diabetics, diet-conscious parents and adults who have a sweet, but calorie-conscious tooth.
Krause is completely convinced of his invention. As a child, he always preferred gummi bears to chocolate. He stood in the kitchen every day for a year and experimented with cooking fruit gum. “If somebody would have said, ten years ago, that’s what I was going to do, I wouldn’t have believed it,” he laughs. He had the idea of inventing sugar-free candy because he was starting to become more interested in a healthy, sugar-free and calorie-reduced diet.
His goal was to produce fruit gum using the sugar substitute erythritol, which is made of corn. Contrary to other polyols like xylitol, this substance does not have a laxative effect. Children could easily eat a whole 100-gram bag. Moreover, he wanted the fruit gum to contain only natural substances. Together with his business partner, Vishal Kawatra from London, he looked for support in the food industry. Many politely declined, reasoning that production was impossible because erythritol crystallises in liquids. Krause and his partner knuckled down in the literature on food engineering and developed a special formula. They had the quality of their fruit gums tested in the neighbourhood at the Adlershof-based ifp Institut für Produktqualität.
Following a year-long development phase, Krause’s idea is starting to shape up: all his gum is now heart-shaped and cherry-flavoured. Since March, they can be bought on Amazon or via the ZVEETZ online shop for 2.95 euros for 50 pieces. It is manufactured in Adlershof, where the Zveetz founder, who is originally from Hildesheim, has been living at his father’s apartment hotel since 2015. He likes to live close to the airport and the city centre, but he would like more restaurants to go for an evening meal on the weekend. More restaurants would also mean more people in the streets. After all, Adlershof is not only a place to work, but a place to live.
Currently, all the red hearts are still handmade – by Zveet’s only employee. The company is now looking for a manufacturing site, including in Adlershof, is testing machines for fruit gum production and looking for investors. Whenever he is not doing that, Christian Krause is trying out his latest ideas for a vegan praline.
By Jördis Götz for Adlershof Journal