In August 2019, Oriol Aldomà, a primary school teacher, paid a visit to his friend Marc Ibós, who worked in the family fruit business in Bellpuig, a small town in the province of Lleida, Spain. While there, they noticed that some of the produce was being rejected by customers due to its appearance. “Can I take that bucket of apples? They’re actually good, right?” Oriol asked his friend. “Of course, yes, anyway, we’re going to throw them away,” Marc responded, unaware that a project was about to be born.
Inspired by Oriol’s recent travels in Asia, the two friends decided to embark on a project with a positive impact on the world, aiming to contribute their grain of sand, or rather, their crate of fruit, to a less absurd market. Every 15 seconds, a child dies of hunger, yet according to the FAO, we waste 570 million tons of good food every year.
Their product had to be locally sourced, transported sustainably, packaged without plastic, and recyclable, with fair prices for farmers. Just like that. They invested only €6,000 (€3,000 to establish the limited company) because they already had Ibós family facilities and knowledge of the sector. “It’s very easy for me to talk to producers because, as a producer myself, I’ve experienced the same thing. Suddenly you have a surplus and don’t know where to place it,” explains the entrepreneur from Lleida. They researched where something similar was being done and found only a couple of firms in the US. In Spain, there was no one.
“The most difficult thing at the beginning was changing the mentality of traditional farmers who didn’t understand the business and either didn’t want to or didn’t know how to participate. Sometimes they sent us part of the rotten produce,” recalls Ibós. TalKual buys fruit and vegetables from all over Spain (they prefer to deal with small farmers), conducts quality control in their warehouse in Bellpuig, packages the product, and ships it nationwide to their customers. 90% are individuals and the remaining 10% are companies like Alsa or Decathlon, which provide them to their employees. Each box contains various seasonal products and comes in different sizes; for example, a 7-kilo box costs around €20.
Despite being an entirely online business, they didn’t focus on marketing during the first two years, “we were growing at a good pace organically,” highlights the co-founder of TalKual. “In reality, the media promoted us. They noticed us from the beginning. From the local radio, we jumped to another one in the province, then to a national one. We’ve already been featured in 80 or 90 publications.” This new breed called influencers, of course, is also a cornerstone in this business story, although in this case, the celebrities came on their own. “We grew a lot with that. Celebrities came and talked about us on their social media. We will always remember actress Anna Castillo; her post was a real turning point,” thanks the co-founder of the company.
Building Brand Ambassadors
Now they do have brand ambassadors, pay for some ads on Instagram (91,000 followers), and create their stories and reels. They make profits that they reinvest every year. In the first year, in 2020, they billed €350,000. The following year, €800,000. In 2022, €1.3 million, and they are going to close this 2023 with nearly €3 million (the projection for 2024 is to double sales again). They started just the two of them and now have 21 employees, including five people at risk of social exclusion.
After being finalists in the CaixaBank Emprendedores XXI awards this year and receiving €12,000 from the European “digital kit,” they set new goals: “It’s in our trajectory to create a marketplace (a virtual market), in the medium term. We want to sell oil, jam, eggs, environmentally friendly products, starting with nuts. The idea is also to continue growing towards other countries. Maybe next year,” points out the young Catalan entrepreneur.