These rigid systems just aren't built for entrepreneurs anymore. That's exactly where Vivid fits in.
Udo Uhlig, Co-Founder, Onshii
A cruise ship does not reschedule. When it leaves the quay, whatever was meant to be in its cold store either made it aboard or did not. There is no delivery the next morning. That single fact shapes how Onshii operates. Founded in 2019 by Udo Uhlig and Karsten Seyfert, the company makes ready-cooked dishes drawn from Asian, Arabic, Mexican and Indian cooking, with an Italian line added this year, and supplies hotels, wholesalers and cruise lines including Viking Cruises, its first major ship customer.
Trust first, logistics second
Uhlig is clear about the order. "Relationship work comes first. You have to create trust and build customer relationships, and only then does everything else follow," he says. In 2019, no one knew the brand. "Wherever you reach out, the first reaction is rejection, or a question mark over someone's head." The answer was the trade fairs, where the team could cook and show how the products simplify a working kitchen. After seven years, the introductions are no longer necessary.
The ship won't wait
What makes cruise supply unforgiving is the clock. "The difference between a hotel and a ship is the timing," Seyfert says. "When the ship leaves that port on that day, the goods have to be there, whatever it costs." If two pallets are needed and not on site, they are produced overnight and delivered. The penalty for missing the window is not a fine.
If our goods are not in the right place at the right time, there's a very high chance these customers stop working with us, because they lose trust.
Karsten Seyfert, Co-Founder, Onshii
Asked what makes that reliability possible, Seyfert keeps it short: "There is no if and no but."
A real cook's edge
Seyfert spent some twenty years in the kitchen, up to executive chef, before founding the company. The decade he spent cooking in Thailand is, he argues, the real advantage. "If you're German and you cook a Thai curry from YouTube, you'll never know what's missing, because you didn't eat it for years. I cooked it authentically every day. That's what we put into practice." His sourcing follows a strict order: quality first, then price, then whether it can be had in bulk. The wider problem the products solve is labour. Skilled kitchen staff are scarce on land and at sea, and Onshii's dishes arrive freshly cooked and ready to regenerate with simple equipment, in 300-gram portions for hotel room service or ten-kilo formats for volume production at sea.
A partner that scales with them
The founders tried several tools early on, including traditional house banks, and found them ill-suited to how they work. Dissatisfied with their provider, they searched for an alternative and found Vivid through a Google ad. "A bullseye," Uhlig says. "An absolute bullseye." What sold them was reach: "We can connect across Europe and worldwide, in different currencies as well as crypto, and at those conditions it's simply unique." Real-time transfers, a simple dashboard, and the AI customer-service agents round it out.
Vivid is interesting for young companies. You get cashback, and interest on your account, so liquid cash you have to hold back but aren't using, we can put to work. Others don't do that.
Karsten Seyfert, Co-Founder, Onshii
The Cashback became an unexpected staple. "I honestly thought we didn't need it," Uhlig says of the rewards now earned on routine online purchases. "But yes, that's top." The founders are candid about limits too: buying abroad by the container, they would like to send euros directly to suppliers in Hong Kong or Vietnam without converting to dollars first. It is the request of a customer who has decided to stay.
Back in Hamburg, the work runs on the only schedule that matters. A ship is due to leave at a fixed hour, and Onshii's pallets need to be on the quay before it does. No if, no but.
