Karma only operates in the UK and Sweden. Save&Serve is built for Berlin — with German compliance, local district routing, and SEPA payouts.
Karma is a well-designed Swedish surplus-food app, but it has never launched a real operational presence in Germany. If you're a Berlin retailer, you can't actually onboard your shop on Karma in any meaningful way — no German-language onboarding, no Gewerbeschein verification, no GewAbfV-compliant reporting, no Berlin district routing for consumers. Save&Serve is purpose-built for Berlin food retailers and handles every German-specific requirement out of the box.
Side-by-side on the things Berlin retailers actually care about.
| Feature | Save&Serve | Karma |
|---|---|---|
| Active in Berlin Karma operates primarily in UK & Sweden. | ||
| German-language onboarding | ||
| Steuernummer / Gewerbeschein verification | ||
| GewAbfV / §11 KrWG compliance reports | ||
| Commission charged to retailer | 0% | ~25% |
| Berlin district filtering (Neukölln, Wedding, etc.) | ||
| SEPA payouts to German bank account | Limited | |
| Built for independent shops | ||
| Item-level listings with real photos |
Karma is a perfectly nice app. The UI is clean, the brand is good, and in Stockholm or London a customer can absolutely find a discounted lunch on it. But operating a food rescue marketplace isn't just a tech problem — it's a local logistics, regulation, and demand problem. Karma simply hasn't done the operational work in Germany.
For a Berlin baker, that means: no German customer support, no German VAT handling, no Steuernummer field on the onboarding form, and almost no consumer demand on the German side because Karma hasn't marketed here. Listing on a platform with no local users is just unpaid shelf space.
Save&Serve was built in Berlin from day one. Our customers are physically here, our retailers are physically here, and the entire compliance, payout and routing stack is configured for German operations.
Germany's Gewerbeabfallverordnung (GewAbfV) and §11 KrWG require food businesses to document how surplus is handled — rescued, donated, or disposed — with weight, category, and EWC waste codes. Inspectors do show up, and a clean paper trail is the difference between a routine visit and a fine.
Karma's data exports are sales-focused. They show you who bought what. Save&Serve produces an actual compliance report — every listing's resolution is categorized, weighed and codified, and you can export a signed monthly PDF straight from the dashboard. That alone saves Berlin retailers hours of manual logging each month.
Karma's published commission for retailers is around 25% of the listing price. On a 2.50€ Brötchen bundle, that's 0.62€ gone before you pay your flour bill.
Save&Serve charges retailers 0% commission. The platform fee that keeps the lights on is paid by the consumer at checkout, fully transparent, and the retailer receives 100% of the listed price via SEPA payout. The math just works better for independent Berlin shops with thin margins.
If you run a shop in Stockholm, Gothenburg, or London, Karma is genuinely a good choice — they have real user density there and the product is mature. But that's the point: a marketplace is only as good as its local liquidity. In Berlin, that liquidity lives on Save&Serve, not on Karma.
Save&Serve is the platform with Berlin consumers actively browsing for deals from local bakeries, kiosks and cafés, and with the German compliance infrastructure your accountant and the inspector both expect.
Karma has had limited or no active operations in Germany. Their core markets remain the UK and Sweden. There is no Berlin-specific onboarding, district routing, or GewAbfV reporting on Karma at the time of writing.
Gewerbeabfallverordnung (GewAbfV) documentation, §11 KrWG resolution logging, EWC waste code categorization, and 5-year audit history retention. PDF reports are exportable monthly.
Yes — for legal compliance every shop must submit its Steuernummer and Gewerbeschein during KYC. This is normal for any platform processing payouts to German businesses.
Yes. Save&Serve pays retailers in EUR via SEPA, daily, through Stripe Connect.