Today we’d like to introduce you to Luis Gramajo and Hans Schrei. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Hans started baking at around age four with his mom and his siblings during Christmastime and never really outgrew it. It was the most cherished family tradition of all, and, frankly, the Schreis were good at it!
As years went by and the usual grownup stuff happens the tradition was kinda lost, until one year when Hans had so many pending vacation days from his job (said job was killing him, btw) that he decided to take the whole month of December off and bake one type of cookie for every day of the Advent. We’re not sure how many types he actually made, but by Christmas Eve he had more than 1000 cookies to give away as presents. A lot of people said “wow you should sell these!” and a few months later Wunderkeks was born.
Did we mention all of this happened in Guatemala, where Hans and Luis were born and raised? And ten years ago?
Anyway, the business flourished and Hans was the golden boy of cookies and pastry. Hans is the type to clap in glee at the sight of a Strawberry Shortcake doll and never really understood why that would be a bad thing, so the whole mission of the company became to “feed your inner child” and every recipe, label and Instagram post was made with this in mind.
Enter Luis, the most successful Tinder date ever. He also claps with glee at happy things (different things, for good or ill) and had never ever baked a cake, as a child or otherwise. But he instinctively understood what Wunderkeks was all about and the many ways this idea of preserving childlike joy and innocence were (are!) important. For a long time Luis was Hans’ rock and support system until a horrible crisis happened within the business (we’ll spare you the details, once more) and he jumped in to fight for Wunderkeks like it was is own (brain)child.
Together, Hans and Luis realized they could conquer the world, so they bought plane tickets to Austin, Texas, which sounded like a great place to give Wunderkeks a home. They actually flew in and out six times in 2018, setting everything up for their move early 2019. After a year and a half here, the cookies have built quite a reputation, so now they ship nationwide.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No smooth road here! Moving to another country, leaving everything behind and starting from scratch in a new city was really something. We started doing the farmer’s markets for a year, they seemed very easy to make them work but knowing that we were depending on our success, there was a huge weight. We didn’t have time to lose, we were there to introduce our brand and understand the market.
We both love doing market research and it was the perfect way to ask the customer what they like, we listened and showed them that we don’t only sell the best cookies ever, we sell an experience!!!
Running a business and being a couple is not easy, that’s why we always recommend every couple that is thinking about starting this journey to think about doing couples therapy, believe us, it’s a life-changing experience, we managed to listen to each other and separate business life with personal life, we actually force ourselves to at least go on a date night once a week!
The fast growth of the business has definitely, been a blessing and a challenge at the same time, we went from cero to a hundred in thirty seconds. We had to learn how to escale our business from selling cookies in a farmers market booth to shipping nationwide.
As you know, we’re big fans of Wunderkeks. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We’re an online bakery that ships cookies and brownies nationwide that grew from a farmers market stand to a multi-million dollar business, in big part, thanks to the pandemic.
In March 2020, we had the opportunity to have a pop-up store for SXSW, we had 25K cookies ready to be baked, and yes, as we all know… BOOM it got canceled! We can’t tell you what exactly went through our minds but we immediately started a campaign to sell those cookies, we got creative and used the little “screw emoji” on our iconic pink background and created an image that read “We got (screw emoji)”.
People responded really well to our campaign, Austin’s community started to step up and helped us out buying the cookies and offering to sell them on independent supermarkets, it was the first time that we were shipping our product and in three days, we had about a hundred orders in. It was super exciting, we went to bed that Sunday and around 11 pm our cellphones started going nuts, we didn’t understand what was happening, orders started to come in like crazy, one after another, to the point that in two hours we had 800 new orders from all over the country!
It turned out that, somehow, the actress Busy Phillips saw our tweet and she re-tweeted asking her followers to help us out, after that, our story got viral and interviews from The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, CBS, Eater, Fox News, etc. came along and after three weeks we ended up selling 35K cookies.
We knew this was a wave, so we worked hard, we learned fast and we managed to keep the ball rolling for our business!
What were you like growing up?
I (Luis) have always been a peoples person, I love making friends, discover new places, very adventurous. I always try to keep my mind and soul around positive things. Animal lover for sure!!!
Hans, on the other hand, has always been an introvert, very smart, intellectual and always willing to learn about everything you can imagine.
We can say that both of us are always willing to help others, when we want something we go all the way out and get it. In paper, you can say that we’re very different but when it comes to our values, we’re the same. Family and friends had always been very important. The way we both were raced taught us that you can achieve whatever you want as long as you stay true to yourself and work hard for it!
Pricing:
- $31.95 for a dozen cookies (1 flavor)
- $34.95 for a dozen cookies (3 different flavors)
Contact Info:
- Email: luispedro@wunderkeks.com
- Website: www.wunderkeks.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wunderkeks_atx/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wunderkeksatx
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/wunderkeks
