Hipp

This story began back in 1898, when the pastry chef Josef Hipp, who lived in Günzburg, had first a daughter and then twins the year after that. And everything would be fine, but Joseph's wife began to have problems with breast milk, a woman clearly was not able to feed such a crowd. By this time the world had already heard about the milk formula that had been developed by the Swiss doctor Henri Nestlé, the founder of Nestlé. The only thing was that it was still not that easy to get. Josef decided to try making the product himself. He baked dry cookies, ground them into powder, and prepared a special mixture based on cow's milk. To his delight, the babies loved it.

Josef was an enterprising man and decided to commercially produce the baby food he had created. He sold it in his own confectionery, which the Hipp family had owned for about four centuries. The locals, having heard about the story of the rescue of the twins, were happy to buy the products (officially called Kinderzwiebackmehl Hipp). We even had to create a small factory.

By the 1930s, the business had gone so well that it was no longer decent to operate at the confectionery level. By that time, the business had been taken over by Georg Hipp, Josef's son. He founded Hipp Werk Georg Hipp OHG. It was in Pfaffenhofen, where the company is still headquartered today. The production of the nutrient mixture was still largely manual.

The rise of the NSDAP to power did not have the best effect on the development of the family business - one of Georg's brothers ended up in a concentration camp for criticizing the new regime. Georg himself was able to avoid this fate. He moved to Munich and from there ran the company until the end of the war.

Although he survived the Second World War relatively unscathed, the postwar years nearly destroyed the company. The year 1948 was particularly difficult, when the company nearly went bankrupt. Georg was saved by the occupiers - he managed to get in touch with the Americans and get himself a large order for baby food for school canteens. Georg also managed to secure such a scarce product as cocoa. The Americans provided the most favorable terms. Three generations of German children had grown up with the company's products and things quickly began to improve.

In 1950 it became clear that grinding cookies with milk was not enough for further development. Georg begins to expand the product range. And by the beginning of the 60s it already includes a wide variety of nutritional mixes, complementary foods and purees. Since 1958, all these products are packaged exclusively in glass containers, which were much more hygienic and allowed to see the contents.

And since 1960, all Hipp products began to be manufactured exclusively with the use of the latest bio-technology. The idea was born in 1956, when Georg met the Swiss Hans Müller, who is known today as one of the founders of the so-called bio-organic method, when fruits and vegetables are grown in a special way, without the use of chemical fertilizers. In order to start growing his own ingredients, Georg purposely bought an abandoned farm near Ptaffenhofen. Since then, bio-organics have been at the core of all Hipp products. Subsequently agreements were made with many farms that also switched to the latest technology.

In 1967 Georg dies and the company is taken over by his son Klaus. He actively took over the business. Under his leadership the company not only greatly increased its production capacity, but also expanded its range of products. This is when the variegated Hipp logo appeared, which is still used today. By 1980, HiPP GmbH owned 60 percent of the German baby food market.

Today Hipp is one of the most famous baby food brands in the world. Under it the widest range of the most diverse products for the nutrition of children of different ages is produced. The company, which remains a family business, owns several subsidiaries scattered around the world.

An interesting fact:

In March 2010, Klaus Hipp reveals that even though the birth rate in Germany is falling, his company's revenues have increased substantially. The reason was that more and more elderly people in the country suffering from dental and digestive tract diseases began to buy Hipp formula for themselves. Such blends are also popular among people who have had strokes and in nursing homes.

However, Klaus stated that the company is not going to change anything in the positioning of its products or advertising in any way. There are also no plans to create any specialized products for adults.