'/%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=small}
Günes Seyfarth
Most organisations can describe a social or environmental problem they are part of. Far fewer can turn one into something that pays for itself. The gap shows up in operating detail: where the supply comes from, and who pays for the result.
Günes Seyfarth has founded nine ventures, among them a food rescue business that won a German federal prize, and advises companies and cities on making social ideas work commercially.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Günes Seyfarth
- She has run the thing she talks about. Community Kitchen München, which she co-founded in 2021, cooked with 10 to 15 tonnes of rescued produce a week in a disused Allianz staff canteen in Neuperlach, and ran until the end of 2025.
- Her ventures have crossed from cause into commercial scale. Mamikreisel, the secondhand marketplace she launched in 2012, had passed 900,000 members when she left in December 2016, and the platform is now part of Vinted.
- Five named bodies have given her work prizes since 2022: the German agriculture ministry, the Bavarian State Government, the Deloitte Foundation, the Jane Goodall Institute Germany, and the City of Munich.
- She has worked on the public sector’s own terms. In 2024 the Community Kitchen took over the canteen of the St.-Anna-Gymnasium, a Munich state school, which the Bavarian government cited when it awarded its Climate Protection Prize.
- She sits where Bavarian business and policy meet, with a seat in the general assembly of the Munich Chamber of Commerce and Industry and, since October 2024, on the board of trustees of the Stiftung Wertebündnis Bayern.
Biography highlights
- Founder or co-founder of nine ventures, among them the Karl & Liesl childcare association, the secondhand marketplace Mamikreisel, Fruitiverse, and Community Kitchen München
- Mamikreisel had passed 900,000 members when she left in December 2016; the platform is now part of Vinted
- Co-founded Community Kitchen München, which ran from 2021 to 2025 with around 25 staff and more than 100 volunteers, and delivered environmental education to up to 3,000 schoolchildren a year
- Won the German federal “Zu gut für die Tonne!” prize for gastronomy in 2022, the Deloitte Foundation’s Hidden Movers Award in 2023, the Bavarian Climate Protection Prize in 2024 and the Jane Goodall Institute Germany’s Making a Difference Award in 2024
- Named in Goldene Bild der Frau 2022 and awarded La Monachia, the City of Munich’s business prize for women, in 2023
- Advises founders, small companies and municipalities through DMGGS GmbH on business model design, costing, positioning and funding, work she has done since 2017, and sits on the board of trustees of the Stiftung Wertebündnis Bayern and in the general assembly of the IHK for Munich and Upper Bavaria
Biography
A missing childcare place is the kind of problem most parents work around. In 2010 it produced a business instead. Karl & Liesl began as a parent initiative in Munich and grew into a kindergarten and an after-school club. Two years later came Mamikreisel, a marketplace for outgrown children’s clothes, which had passed 900,000 members by the time she left it in December 2016. It is now part of Vinted.
Food waste came next, at a different scale. Community Kitchen München began in 2021, co-founded with Judith Stiegelmayr, and set up in the shell of an old Allianz staff canteen in Neuperlach. It cooked and sold meals from produce that manufacturers, wholesalers and farms were about to throw away, between 10 and 15 tonnes of it a week. It ran until the end of 2025. In October 2022 the German agriculture ministry gave it the national “Zu gut für die Tonne!” prize for gastronomy.
The work also moved into public institutions. In 2024 the Community Kitchen took over the canteen of the St.-Anna-Gymnasium and trained pupils to cook with rescued food, which the Bavarian government cited when it awarded its Climate Protection Prize that November. The Jane Goodall Institute Germany named the project its Making a Difference winner the same year, and she went on stage with Goodall and Peter Wohlleben in Eberswalde that October.
Since 2017 the advisory work has run alongside the ventures. Through DMGGS GmbH she takes founders, small companies and municipalities through business model design, costing, positioning and funding. In November 2026 ProSieben broadcasts “LINDA ZERVAKIS. HOPE”, a documentary in which she appears alongside Jane Goodall and the yachtsman Boris Herrmann.
Key speaking topics
- Serial entrepreneurship and venture building
- Food waste as a climate and a business problem
- Social business models that carry their own costs
- Scaling and leaving a consumer marketplace
- Courage and failure in founding companies
- Partnerships between a city, companies and volunteers
- Temporary use of vacant buildings
Ideal for
- Founders and owner-managers deciding whether a purpose-led idea can cover its own costs
- Sustainability and ESG leads who have the targets and now need an operating model
- City economic development teams, property owners and quarter managers with vacant space to fill
Audience outcomes
- A worked example of a food rescue business, from where the produce comes from to who pays for the meal
- The sequence she used to get from an unmet need to a trading company, including the ventures she closed
- A realistic account of what a social venture costs to run, staffing and volunteer management included
- Specific examples of what a city, a landlord, companies and volunteers each contributed to one Munich project
Talks
How nine ventures came out of problems she had herself, and what it took to start each one.
Key takeaways:
- Commit to the problem rather than to a particular solution
- Know the numbers, so that a leap of faith becomes a decision
- Expect rejection as a normal part of the sequence
What it took to turn food rescue in Munich into an organisation with staff, customers and a public contract.
Key takeaways:
- Start where the problem is visible, because that is what people act on
- City, business and volunteers each supply what the others cannot
- Build the economics in from the first week
A ten month training project that took her from not being able to swim front crawl at 43 to a 6.5 kilometre crossing from Europe to Asia.
Key takeaways:
- A late start is still a start
- Large targets come apart into small regular sessions
- Courage is trainable