The Founding (2002, Hamburg)
In 2002 two Hamburg students, Mirco Wolf Wiegert and Lorenz Hampl, started fritz-kola with about €7,000, mixing the first batches and selling crates out of a car to the bars of their home city. They wanted a cola with more caffeine, less compromise and no big corporation behind it.
Part of fritz-kola
7 moments in this segment.
- — fritz-kola is founded (2002). Mirco Wolf Wiegert and Lorenz Hampl, students in Hamburg, launch fritz-kola with around €7,000 — mixing early batches and delivering crates to bars themselves.
- — The founders’ mission. Mirco Wolf Wiegert on building fritz-kola from nothing — a story of stubborn independence and treating a cola company as a training ground for something bigger.
- — Mirco Wolf Wiegert at deGUT (2014). fritz-kola’s co-founder tells the start-up story at the Deutsche Gründer- und Unternehmertage.
- — Wiegert — "Can you drink the world beautiful?". A Rheinische Post interview with Mirco Wolf Wiegert on purpose, business and the brand’s mission.
- — The start-up success of fritz-kola. How two students built one of Europe’s best-known independent soft drinks.
- — The founder’s story — in depth. A long-form podcast interview with fritz-kola founder Mirco Wolf Wiegert.
- — The first bottles. The early fritz-kola bottle — glass, returnable, with the stark two-faces label that would become instantly recognisable. The subject dates from 2003; this photograph was taken in 2025.
