Hello, adventure seekers and snack lovers!
Today, we’re strapping on our running shoes and heading to the highlands of Vietnam with Markus, the founder of Lecka. What started as an ultra marathon training journey has turned into a mission to create delicious, sustainable sports snacks. Join us to learn more about his journey and the tasty, sustainable snacks of Lecka!
GiftGood: Hi Markus, welcome! It’s a pleasure to have you with us today.Â
Can you share a bit about yourself and tell us about what inspired you to move to the highlands of Vietnam and start Lecka?Â
Markus: Thanks for having me and giving us the opportunity to share more about Lecka. I worked for 6 years in Singapore in the venture capital industry so I already had a pretty decent idea of what was going on in Southeast Asia. Vietnam always fascinated me as it was back then the most unexplored market on my side. In 2019, I decided to pause that career path for a while and double down on my passion of ultra running. The highlands in Vietnam, around Dalat, are a fantastic training ground with a more dry and cold climate. I spent months training for my 70km and 100km races in the Dalat hills.Â
Long training sessions need fuel. So, out of need, I started to experiment with local Vietnamese ingredients that can be used for energy bars and energy gels. With a bunch of other trail runners, we realised that the fruits, nuts and seeds give us perfect energy and hydration. Lecka was born.
GiftGood: We’re curious about the name 'Lecka.' What’s the story behind it, and what it represents for your brand?
Markus: Lecka is a wordplay on the German word for delicious (‘lecker’). That brand name manifests our mission to provide delicious nutrition for endurance lifestyles. No need for artificial ingredients that 1) don’t taste great, and 2) get your stomach upset during exercise. Why not use what nature has given us already so plentiful?
Also, our aim is to combine the thoughtful and detail orientated approach of German/European quality to creating endurance nutrition with the amazing ingredients that Southeast Asia has to offer. Lecka stands for connecting the West and East via sports and food.Â
GiftGood: Can you describe a memorable moment from your early days of testing and developing Lecka products with the running community?
Markus: In 2020, when we started to test our 200+ recipes with the tight knit trail running community in Vietnam, we decided to use banana leaves as our first packaging material (see images). Banana leaves are commonly used across Asia to package food, e.g. rice cakes, and can be seen on many food markets. We packaged hundreds of our energy bars samples in banana leaves, took them to the many trail running races and handed them out to our community. Shelf life is short (<5 days), but there is probably no greener way than using those leaves. They decompose within a few weeks on the trails. Besides providing delicious and functional nutrition, taking that initial step paved the way to taking a thoughtful approach in our sustainability efforts.Â
The community really appreciated those banana leaves and it helped us tremendously in the early days. Do something that does not scale at the beginning. We were able to test all our recipes and narrow it down to three recipes, where one of them is still our bestseller today (Mango Coconut).Â
GiftGood: We love that Lecka uses fresh, local ingredients. What are some of the special local ingredients you use in Lecka products, and how did you discover them?
Markus: Vietnam has an abundance of healthy, fresh, delicious ingredients. The art is to find the right combination to create some unique flavours.Â
Our Energy Bars are made from dried fruits, nuts and seeds, plus some dry powder. For example, our Mango Coconut flavour is made from dried mango, prunes, dried banana, coconut flakes, cashews and brown rice syrup, plus some minor ingredients like salt, sunflower lecithin and electrolytes. Another flavour is Cacao Banana where we use the cacao powder, cacao nibs and cacao butter from Vietnam. 90% of our ingredients come from the Mekong Delta region in South Vietnam.Â
Our Energy Gels are made from fresh fruit puree, brown rice syrup, basil seeds and some electrolytes. The passion fruit and banana are harvested in Quang Nam province, within 100km of our factory. From farm to factory in less than 18 hours. Beat that!
We are immensely proud to work directly with small hold farms in Vietnam that provide us with the freshest ingredients for every batch we produce. We put a lot of effort into creating very short supply chains. We hope that our customers can taste that freshness.
GiftGood: How does Lecka’s involvement with sports communities around the world help your brand grow and thrive?
Markus: We were born out of the endurance community. That is our church. Being athletes ourselves, we know that our products have to work in the most challenging situations. Athletes place trust in us that if they need energy and electrolytes, Lecka delivers. That trust is our most important currency and we work closely with many communities world wide to deliver on that trust.Â
We see an emergence of endurance as a lifestyle. People centre their lives around anything endurance, from training to travelling and gear. We are the nutrition brand that supports that lifestyle. Delicious and functional. Additionally, endurance sports are increasingly done in groups and social settings. New communities are built offline and then taken online for further engagement and discussion. As a community focused brand, we move in and support those tribes.Â
GiftGood: What’s the biggest challenge you faced while creating Lecka, and how did you overcome it?
Markus: Packaging, packaging, packaging. We embarked on a very challenging journey at the beginning with our home compostable packaging. We decided to produce in our own factory in Vietnam and hence didn’t have the expertise to use that new material on conventional packaging machines. It took us 2 years, a lot of sweat, blood and tears to get it right. Time and patience solve most issues.Â
Additionally, we have been focused on creating local supply chains and on creating partnerships with our suppliers. It took us some time to find the best ingredients for our products that meet our taste and quality requirements. Shortening the time of delivery and keeping the products the freshest was quite challenging at the beginning.Â
Lastly, scaling a food brand to various countries comes with challenges in shelf life and product quality. Like any other packaged food business, we had to learn our lessons on how to make sure that anywhere in the world our products would be the same.Â
GiftGood: We’re excited to hear about what’s next for Lecka! Can you give us a sneak peek into any upcoming developments we can expect from Lecka in the near future?
Markus: We are excited to grow more into various other sport communities like trekking, climbing and gravel biking. Outdoor sports are a fast growing industry and everyone that has ambitious goals requires functional nutrition.Â
Also, we are planning to launch in more countries, e.g. the United States. Tapping into the largest consumer market in the world is going to be an amazing adventure by a regional Southeast Asian brand. We can’t wait to have people in the West enjoy our tropical products.Â
GiftGood: Thank you so much, Markus, for sharing the inspiring story and insights behind Lecka. It's been wonderful learning about your journey and the incredible work you’re doing.Â
To wrap things up,Â
We hope you found Lecka’s story as inspiring as we did. If you’re looking for a pre-made gift set or a perfect addition to the customised gift box for the fitness lover in your life, Lecka’s delicious and healthy snacks are a great choice. Packed with natural ingredients, these products are perfect for anyone who loves to stay active and healthy. Trust us, they’ll be thrilled!