Crisp Announces Availability of Sales Forecasting Platform for the Food Industry with 30 Alpha Customers Live

SaaS Platform Now Ready for Beta Testing for Growth and Enterprise Food Brands After Announcing $14 Million Series a Funding Round in September 2019

Crisp, a new Software as a Service platform that seeks to reduce food waste while increasing profitability, announced the availability of its software for beta-testing. This follows the onboarding of 30 customers, who have a range of $15M to $10B in revenue, during the alpha stage of the platform.

CEO and founder Are Traasdahl established Crisp to create fresh and actionable business insights for customers that address pain points throughout the supply chain, from forecasting to staffing and campaign analytics. The importance of forecasting comes at a crucial time in the food supply chain where 1.6 billion tons of food worth about $1.2 trillion goes to waste. Crisp’s forecasting helps to eliminate over-ordering that causes food waste and reduces out-of-stocks for increased profitability.

Read More: Blockchain Needs Quantum-Resistant Technology Says Renowned Cryptographer David Chaum

“We have learned a tremendous amount after meeting with hundreds of food suppliers and retailers,” said Are Traasdahl, CEO and founder of Crisp. “Their feedback has informed our approach to create a solution that will simply integrate with their business operations, delivering clear and actionable insights. We will be consolidating complex data inputs into value-based solutions that offer a significant ROI.”

At the root of the food waste challenge is a lack of efficient communication between food suppliers, retailers and distributors. This is caused by an IT infrastructure that is often cumbersome, prone to human error, and siloed. Crisp aims to consolidate every byte of data to generate more reliable and automated sales forecasts that can then be used to drive better, more efficient operations across the food chain.

Read More: AI Brings New Energy to Oil and Gas

“As an alpha partner for Crisp’s forecasting platform, we have been impressed by the responsiveness of the Crisp team and their interest in truly understanding our business needs and goals,” said Gary Pfeiffer, Executive Vice President, Superior Farms. “We appreciate that Crisp prioritizes ease of use and look forward to utilizing their platform to optimize our supply chain and reduce waste.”

In September, the company announced a $14 million Series A funding round that was led by FirstMark Capital, with Spring Capital, Swell and HDM LLC also participating. As part of the company’s investment, FirstMark Capital founder and managing director Rick Heitzmann was named to the Crisp board of directors.

Read More: Andreessen Horowitz Leads $44 Million Financing of Fivetran