Founded by 21-year old entrepreneurs Peter Bæch and Jonas Gøttler, Århus-based food management SaaS Kanpla wants to tackle food waste from public canteens.
Kanpla is off to a strong start, having just closed a €2.2 million seed backed by the Amsterdam VC fund henQ. Last year, it says almost 1,500 food kitchens registered to use its platform, which collects live sales insights to support future decisions on meal quantities.
Unlike major restaurant chains, small canteens often lack visibility on how many meals might be wasted on a given day. Real time sales metrics should help, but Kanpla is also promising to strengthen customer interactions, for instance by sending smartphone push notifications to advertise special meals.
Following the seed round, Kanpla is looking to branch out via overseas forays into the Netherlands, Norway and the UK, where it hopes canteens will be just as eager to implement its service.
henQ partner Jan Andriessen cites an earlier Danish success story, ZenDesk, as an example of the country's SaaS innovation hotbed and potential revenues from enterprise niches.
ZenDesk, a customer support ticket platform, has since relocated to California having listed in 2014, though it has since returned to private investor ownership.
Andriessen said: "We believe that Kanpla, with their impressive traction and innovative approach to digitalising an often overlooked industry, has what it takes to be a game-changer in the canteen industry.
"At first, the canteen industry can seem obscure, but it’s a big market with huge potential. Many B2B software products have blossomed in seemingly non-obvious markets. Zendesk, one of Denmark’s greatest tech businesses, was founded well before customer success software became a well-defined term. Kanpla can be the same, and that’s what makes them the type of B2B business we’re excited to support."
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