Turnip Instead of Ham: Startup Verrano Conquers Deutsche Bahn’s Onboard Bistros

During the Veganuary campaign month in 2025, Deutsche Bahn took a bold step by introducing turnip-based cold cuts on their bagels. The vegan alternative was developed by startup Verrano and had previously only been available in select organic and gourmet stores as well as fine-dining restaurants. We spoke with founder Manuel Siskowski about the initial feedback from this initiative and gained insights into Verrano’s unique aging and smoking process for vegetables.

Manuel, you had the opportunity to supply Deutsche Bahn’s onboard restaurants with aged turnip for bagels in January. How did you manage to get your foot in the ICE door, so to speak?
Honestly, it was incredibly easy. The product manager at Deutsche Bahn tried our aged root vegetable at a hotel we supply—and was immediately impressed.

Didn’t you have to massively scale up production to meet Deutsche Bahn’s demand? How did you manage that?
We only founded the company in 2023 and initially produced our products in a vegan butcher shop. By the time Deutsche Bahn approached us, we had already been searching for a new production facility for several months. We eventually found the perfect spot in beautiful Biebertal—an old meat processing plant that we had to renovate. It was a fortunate coincidence in terms of timing.

How much time did you have between Deutsche Bahn’s request and the actual rollout?
About four months. Thanks to the help of many supporters, we made it happen.

Have you received any feedback from Deutsche Bahn?
Yes, Deutsche Bahn’s response has been very positive, especially from their employees. Many train attendants are active on LinkedIn, which I hadn’t realized before. We’ve also received numerous positive reviews on Instagram and YouTube.

That sounds fantastic!
Yes, it has been an incredibly exciting experience for us. Normally, we supply smaller restaurants and gourmet stores, where our customers are already vegans or people who love organic and fine foods. But on the train, we reach a broad cross-section of the German population. It doesn’t get more mainstream than this for us. It’s fascinating to see how this completely new product is received by this audience. Hardly anyone is familiar with turnips, so for us, this is an incredibly exciting experiment. And we really admire Deutsche Bahn for taking a chance on it.

What has been your biggest takeaway so far?
That Deutsche Bahn has such a massive online reach.

Were there any other major challenges you had to overcome?
We’re used to supplying smaller restaurants where ingredients are prepared by hand. With Deutsche Bahn, we had to become much more efficient and adjust the thickness of our slices. Ironically, this actually improved the overall product experience.

Is there a chance the collaboration will continue?
The campaign ended in late January. Of course, we’d love to continue working with Deutsche Bahn.

Can you share a bit about your background? How did you come up with the idea to treat turnips, celery, and beets like Serrano ham? Are the processes even comparable?
Our co-founder Max worked as a chef in fine dining for years. Aging and fermenting vegetables has become trendy in that space, and Max experimented extensively in this area. The goal was to process vegetables in a way that provides the same satisfying experience as eating a high-quality cured meat. It took us 4.5 years to develop the process we use today. Even then, we weren’t sure if there would be demand for it. But we got lucky—our regional bakery partner, Biokaiser, decided to carry our product. This allowed us to test Verrano in stores and get direct feedback from customers.

Meat alternatives are often criticized as highly processed industrial products that may not be healthy. How does Verrano address this concern?
In most cases, that criticism is valid—many meat substitutes rely on additives. That’s why we don’t claim that our turnip tastes like roast beef. We take a different approach: we bring out the best in vegetables. Our four-week aging process allows for deep flavor development. After that, we process our products based on customer needs—whether in cubes, slices, or spreads. Our products are 95% vegetables, with just a bit of salt, smoke, and sugar. One big advantage over conventional meat substitutes is that our simple process made it easy to obtain organic certification, which has also helped us get our products into fine-dining restaurants.

Can you give us more details about your production process?
The vegetables are harvested, cleaned, and washed. Then, we let them age and smoke them. This changes both their taste and texture. We lose about two-thirds of the moisture in the process. We prefer working with oversized vegetables because they are easier to process—similar to how the cured meat industry works. However, vegetables behave differently than meat. We have to be extremely careful to manage microbiology properly. Optimizing our process was a huge challenge, but it resulted in an exceptionally long shelf life. Once sliced, Verrano stays fresh for eight weeks. When kept whole, it lasts up to six months.

Do you have plans to expand your aging process to other vegetables?
Our process could be applied to other vegetables, but for now, we’re more interested in refining what we already have. We’re currently looking for partners in the flammkuchen and pizza industries because Verrano works incredibly well as a topping.

Contact:

Website: www.verrano.de

LinkedIn: Manuel Siskowski