What’s cooking? 14 Innovative Food Ideas at Hamburg’s First Food Hackathon
Jul 23, 2017 · 3 min read
G+J Gruner und Jahr, one of the largest publishing houses in Europe, hosted and co-organized the first food hackathon in Hamburg together with next media accelerator last weekend. G+J has an incredible high number of publications in German covering the topic food, among others Vegan für mich, Deli, Essen und Trinken, Essen und Trinken mit Thermomix and the very successful and well known food magazine for men Beef!
Let’s recognize food has always been be a hot topic. Who doesn’t love food? 😁 We should not undervalue business models and opportunities that can come up in cooperation between the media and the food industry.

What I learnt at #CodeKombüse, the first food hackathon in Hamburg?
- There is (still) a huge interest in the topic “food”. Having over 130 registrations, we were able to confirm one more time that food brings definitely people together. During the kick off event the attendees presented 26 ideas!
- Bots, bots, bots. The raising curiosity in computer programs that can communicate like humans is very promising. Bots can be developed for ordering food, discovering next restaurants where to eat or for finding out more about food allergies or intolerances.
- Community. Meeting people (internationals and locals) to cook together isn’t new but apparently it’s here to stay. Local foodies meet at somebody’s place to spend a cooking day, from shopping at the supermarket, to preparing the food and eating together.
- There is still a bunch of creative minds out there! When we thought we had seen it all, someone comes up with a crazy cool idea. Could you imagine a social network in where you can start a conversation by looking at what the person has in the fridge?
- A more informed society. Apparently nowadays we want to know more and more about the products we buy. It is regional? What does it exactly mean? Bio? Vegan? Which food coloring have been used? Could ever an app provide us such information?
- For dirty hands, better voice commands. Thanks to the new smart speakers like the Amazon Ecco or Alexa, many people play already with the possibilities that a touch free world has to offer. Imagine, you won’t need to pass book pages or touch the screen of your smartphone or tablet with your dirty cooking hands any more.
- Eat, snack, repeat. During a hackathon food means fuel. It is very important to have enough energy to work all the time but if the hackathon is about food, I bet you will have lots of it! Some of us put on some kilos ;-)


