How AVE – Absolute Vegan Empire (now known as velivery) – came into being
While the Latin word “Ave” – which means “be well!” or “farewell” – doesn’t actually have all that much to do with the following story about how Absolute Vegan Empire (AVE) was brought into being by founder Tobias Graf, what both have in common is the desire to strive towards living well.
At the age of 18 years young, when he met his future wife, Tobias Graf – who died in 2014 at the age of just 35 – had long since made the decision to lead a vegan lifestyle. This decision, which was set in stone, was doubtless brought about in part by the school trip to a slaughterhouse he had been on two years earlier, which had shaped him deeply and had made him become a vegetarian practically overnight.
His favorite hardcore bands at the time, “Earth Crisis” and “Morning again” – whose lyrics focused on the straight edge movement and the exploitation of animals – also reinforced his resolve in terms of his decision to lead a purely vegan lifestyle and to promote this vision in the world around him.
After completing an apprenticeship at the department store Hertie (now known as Karstadt) in the German town of Weiden, the staunch pacifist chose to complete a year's civilian service in an old people’s home rather than doing Army training. He then went on to work for Karstadt for a further year before making his dream of being his own boss a reality in 2001, when he established AVE.
Schon damals fand er das Konzept eines guten Freundes, Betreiber eines veganen Ladens, äußerst spannend und weitsichtig, allerdings entschloss er sich auf dessen Rat erst mal vegane Waren aus dem Ausland zu importieren bzw. herstellen zu lassen.
To begin with, these mainly included vegan bars and snack sausages – which he sold on the sly, along with stickers and patches, to headbanging lead singers at hardcore music concerts. Later on this would evolve into a whole range of plant-based products for everyone.
In 2004, he established the brand “Vantastic Foods”. At this time, the range mainly included soy and other meat/sausage imitation products which he had gone all the way to the Czech Republic to pick up himself. Collaboration with a bakery also played a huge role in meaning that Vantastic Foods was able to include more and more products in its sustainable range.
The business’s operations room for packaging and dispatches was to be found in the garage and cellar of Tobias’ parents’ house. A logical consequence of this was, of course, that he renovated his childhood bedroom into a tasteful, bustling office. In 2007, when the company started to grow apace and Tobias’ parents’ place was overflowing, he had no option but to have the first warehouse built in Nabburg. Once the warehouse was completed, Tobias was able to gain a whole army of staff for the project: one picker, one packer and one office lady.
When the company’s largest client at the time, “alles-vegetarisch.de” was up for sale, Tobias Graf decided to take over this company too, build up their online shop and successfully bring the – now fully veganized – range up to date.
He had managed to break into the market, and the fact that he was getting over 1000 orders a day – at Christmas, of all times – spoke for itself and for Tobias Graf’s vision of the future.
He was a visionary and a doer who always made the time to listen to his staff, was full of new ideas, was incredibly fair, generous and a real family-guy at heart. This plant-based motivation machine of a man was able to win over everyone he came into contact with, as his convictions about an alternative – or perhaps even better – lifestyle ran through his veins from an early age.
And so it was that a tiny seed grew into a delicate plant, from there into a whole bed of flowers, and then even into a unique Garden of Eden with a varied range of products from which anyone who wishes to may eat...
