Our Story
Ricardo Andrade
Founder and CEO
La Vida Lokal
La Vida Lokal was founded in 2025 by Ricardo Andrade, a German-Brazilian citizen who worked many years in the private sector as well as in NGOs in Brazil, Europe and China, before moving to Germany in 2014, where he completed a masters in Public Policy and Management and met his husband. Ricardo worked for 10 years in refugee assistance in Berlin, where he experienced first hand how difficult it is for refugees to settle in a new country. After learning from similar projects in the Netherlands, Austria and Portugal, completing several training courses, reading lots of books, growing mushrooms and microgreens at home and watching many Youtube videos, Ricardo decided it was time to bring something new to the table in Berlin - literally.
La Vida Lokal started with the idea of collecting coffee waste from local cafes in Berlin, upcycling it to produce substrate for growing mushrooms and microgreens, and offering work opportunities for refugees. The concept was well-received and we are now collecting and upcycling coffee grounds from several partner cafes: Aprilkind, Neumanns, Neumanns um die Ecke, Neumanns Bäckerei, and Silo Coffee - all of them traditional cafes with professional and friendly teams, delicious coffee and food, and loyal communities in the Friedrichshain district in Berlin. We also collaborate with Blaue Bohne, a Berlin-based coffee roastery with a unique portfolio of microlots and single origin roasts, who provides us with coffee husks, which we also upcycle.
Our vision is to transform La Vida Lokal step-by-step into a trusted source of fresh, high-nutrition local produce, functional foods from around the world with proven health benefits, and curated, medically supervised information, products and services that contribute to natural nutrition, well-being and mental health. In order to achieve this, we count on the supervision of Dr. med Lukas Hirt, a German neurologist, psychiatrist and psychotherapist with over 25 years of medical and clinical experience, including positions at the Yale University School of Medicine (USA), Southampton University (UK) and the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Germany). A core part of the concept is to work towards the "triple bottom line" goal: an environmentally sustainable, socially responsible and profitable business.
We thank our partners for helping us decrease waste and upcycle coffee grounds and husks into healthy and delicious local food for Berlin:
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