In Backnang there has recently been a French fries machine: fried potato sticks at the touch of a button, in “quick mode” within 35 seconds! But in case someone doesn’t think that’s crazy enough: the idea generator and investor is the Unterweissach lawyer Gunnar Stuhlmann, who we now simply call legendary.
Before we get to the fries – there is a lot to say about Stuhlmann, 57, except for one thing: that he is a bore. When he laughs, and he does so often, the clouds over Backnang part and you can’t help it: you laugh with him.
Gunnar Stuhlmann: The FDP Rems-Murr should remember him vividly…
He once shook up the Rems-Murr politics. In 2010, as a FDP member, he ran for the district administrator position against defending champion Johannes Fuchs, also FDP; Even the FAZ found it shrill enough to report. He once ran for the state parliament and called CDU competitor Wilfried Klenk “Grüßgott-August from Oppenweiler”. And at an epoch-making district meeting of the Liberals in Schorndorf in 2010, political fun guerrilla Stuhlmann requested that the Rems-Murr-FDP “decide” to call on its federal chairman Guido Westerwelle to resign. However, the assembly rejected the request with a huge Honecker majority. He then briefly joined the AfD, which at the time was still considered an economically liberal professor’s party; and soon ran away again. He wanted “nothing to do with this Mr. Höcke”. Okay. Now for the fries.
One evening last year, Stuhlmann was once again sitting with landlord Athanasios Kalaitzis, 42, in the Rose in Unterweissach, as he often did. “I’m the biggest fan of the gyro plate” there. What happened sometimes happened “when you have a nice chat over your second beer”: ideas started flying around the room. Kalaitzis said he had a kiosk on Talstrasse in Backnang that sold tobacco and a Toto lottery. Stuhlmann said: The place could be “pimped up”. In Kleve, North Rhine-Westphalia, he saw a french fries machine – wouldn’t it be “charming” if Backnang also had something like that?
The idea of the french fries machine: Stuhlmann and Athanasios Kalaitzis get serious
Of course, you could really… Lots of people got drunk on plans when the economy got late. However, most people have all sorts of sober concerns the next morning when the beer is gone.
Not so Stuhlmann. He is actually a lawyer, his law firm, which specializes in criminal and inheritance law, is booming – but “you can’t just leave good ideas lying around!” That’s why he also runs a residential construction company on the side and has bought the Mittagsbacher Löwen. He wants to turn it into an “organic plus hotel”; For now, he has rented the inn to the district as accommodation for Ukrainian refugees.
And so Gunnar Stuhlmann as an investor and Athanasios Kalaitzis as a specialist in the field together created the Backnanger “French fries paradise”: It is an open-plan room on Talstrasse down by the Murr, the walls are painted red (“the Cola color”). ), the ceiling lights up in “French fry yellow”. But the heart of the matter is the “Pommat”.
This is how the “Pommat” works: two deep fryers, one freezer unit
Behind the front of the machine are two deep fryers with boiling oil and a freezer. If someone pays 2.80 euros and presses the button, the sticks that have already been preheated in deep fryer 1 move on to deep fryer 2, where they are sizzled completely golden brown within 35 seconds – you can watch a digital clock display ticking down. (Only “Le Fritteur” can do it better – more about that here.)
He’s “not in the mood for sloppy hot air things,” says Stuhlmann – but these “are just wow.” He chuckles with excitement that makes his shoulders shake.
According to Kalaitzis, everything is like in the catering industry; Only “the human hand” is replaced. New oil is pumped in regularly and the old is pumped out – “No snack bar in the area has that much change,” estimates Gunnar Stuhlmann. And now the legal, real estate and gastronomic all-rounder is also revealing himself to be a very talented advertising copywriter: “That’s the Kalaitzis family’s promise of freshness!”
Guests at the Rose in Unterweissach know it: the special Kalaitzis spice
Let’s try it…actually: These things are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and, holla, very distinctively seasoned. Instead of regular salt, the machine dusts the fries with the “special seasoning” that is also available in Rose.
The business has been running since December, with 70 portions going out on good days and even more on very good days. It’s quiet at lunchtime, but the night owls arrive after 11 p.m., and on Sunday mornings at 3 a.m. there can be 15 or 20 people queuing. The last ones usually eat when dawn breaks. And if you get thirsty or want to smoke – there is also a vending machine with e-shisha, energy drinks, canned Jack Daniels or Stuttgarter Hofbräu in the French fries paradise.
“The location is great,” says Stuhlmann: People can park on the Bleichwiese, stroll along the river on Talstrasse or place the bowl of fries on the wall and watch the Murr gradually move towards the Neckar.
Discussions about additional locations are currently underway. “The fast food market,” predicts Stuhlmann, as usual modestly, is “on the verge of a revolution in offerings.”
2024-02-07 07:30:48
#Backnang #Lawyer #Gunnar #Stuhlmann #selling #fries #vending #machine #News #RemsMurr #district #Waiblingen #newspaper #publisher
