From bouillon cubes to plant-based meat-hacks, flavour has always been the magic ingredient in Knorr’s culinary creations. We take a closer look at this 185-year success story.

How it started
Knorr’s success story started with lunch.

Or rather the search for appetising, quick and nutritious midday meals for workers in Carl Heinrich Knorr’s factory in Heilbronn Germany, which in 1838 was dedicated to supplying chicory to the coffee market.

Having identified this gap in the market, Carl Heinrich Knorr began to experiment with drying vegetables and spices in order to preserve both their nutritional content and their flavour.

By 1873 he was ready to share his culinary innovations with the world and the first Knorr dried soups began to be sold across continental Europe.

It was the beginning of a success story that would see the brand expand quickly, with a pre-cooked foods range introduced in 1885, followed by sauce mixes in 1908.

Then, in 1912, the bouillon cube was launched. It was a milestone moment, as this small square of flavour would quickly become the brand’s trademark product and a bestseller across the decades.

How it’s going
Today, Knorr is the world’s fifth-largest consumer packaged goods brand, enjoying year-on-year growth since 2020, thanks both to its retail division that accounts for 70% of the business and to a professional range of products that supports Unilever’s food service business, Unilever Food Solutions (UFS).

Knorr’s bouillon/stock cubes are undoubtedly drivers of this growth. With 600 cubes sold every minute, it is not surprising that they have become a staple in both home and professional kitchens all over the world.

And they are not alone. It is estimated that a Knorr product is chosen from the brand’s extensive range 3 billion times a year.

Now available in 95 countries globally, Knorr’s key markets are found in the US, Germany, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Canada, France, South Africa, Poland, Pakistan, Thailand and China.

A leader across most of these markets, the key to Knorr’s international success lies in its ‘glocal’ (global/local) hybrid approach , which leverages the brand’s global food technologies into tailoring products to meet local and regional taste profiles.

The bouillon cube offers a great example. In addition to its core chicken cube, Knorr currently has over 180 active alternative chicken bouillon recipes on the market, each tailored to meet specific geographical taste preferences.

In Mexico, for example, chicken cubes are enhanced with the herbs and spices that are especially favoured in Latin American cooking. These include chicken and chipotle, and chicken and coriander/cilantro variations.

The brand takes a similar ‘glocal’ approach to serving consumer bases with specific dietary requirements. In the Netherlands, for instance, Knorr has launched a range of traditional, halal-certified soups such as Chorba and Harira in order to better serve the country’s significant Muslim community.

But it is not only geography that determines taste preferences. Generational differences can play a role too, which is why, for example, recent product launches and promotions have focused on meeting the needs of younger consumers.

In India, for example, K-Pots, a range of Asian-flavoured mini meals, were launched to satisfy a growing appetite among younger consumers for convenient snacking options.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Knorr’s award-winning Eat Your Veggies campaign, aimed at encouraging young people to eat more plant-based meals, leveraged the influencer power of seven TikTok creators who transformed the instructions for meat-free Knorr Fix recipe variations into songs.

The purpose that powers it
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