Alin Șerban, formerly of Tazz and Wolt Romania, and Călin Costinaș, formerly deputy CEO of Profi, launched the Hambar platform on Wednesday, 21 October, at the Soro Lume restaurant in Bucharest. Mediafax reported the launch that evening. No profit was published, and a sheep-“adoption” scheme is not already running.

The platform starts with more than 200 producers and more than 4,000 products, in ten categories. The founders aim, in six months, for 600 producers and about 10,000 products. The announced commission is 25% of net sales, excluding VAT, and covers, they said, technology, marketing, packaging and organising transport.

Deliveries are announced in Romania and the other EU states. Hambar has a partnership with eMAG: Genius subscribers get two free deliveries a month, for orders of at least 300 lei each. Salt Bank is presented as the official bank; Robert Anghel also spoke at the event about a lending product for merchants, an intention, not a product already on the market.

Start-up.ro writes that the platform became available for orders on Wednesday, after a soft launch among friends a week earlier. The founders say they personally visited the listed producers and keep no own stock: customers order what the producer has then. Șerban told Mediafax they brought “a lot of money from home”; the amount was not disclosed. They are also talking to possible institutional investors.

Chef Mihai Toader, the Soro Lume host, said that after ten years this is the first platform that can bring him local produce from small producers at home. Costinaș stressed they do not want to become an OLX: each producer is checked at the place of production. Automated sign-up is still to be made available; listing is not automatic.

Șerban also spoke of a future advance-payment scheme, symbolically tied to a sheep, a cow, a hive or a tree, so the farmer has money before harvest. That is an announced direction, not a service opened on Wednesday.

The launch is a market event. The producer and product figures are the founders’, not an audited statement, and the six-month targets remain targets.

Image: Joe Mabel, Obor market, Bucharest, May 2006, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons; the hall in 2006, not Wednesday launch at Soro Lume.

Sources consulted: Garlic jam, plum ketchup and lovage beer. Thousands of products from small Romanian producers on a new online platform - Mediafax, 21 October 2026; Hambar: Romanian producers can reach EU deliveries - start-up.ro, 21 October 2026.