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Zenput raises $27M Series C to keep multiunit operations flowing no matter the location
Ensuring food safety compliance can be challenging at one restaurant, let alone across thousands of restaurants. Zenput has developed technology aimed at making sure operating procedures are quickly adapted so that businesses maintain quality.
The San Francisco-based operations execution company raised $27 million in Series C financing, led by Golub Capital, to continue developing its application to automate operation procedures like tracking food safety, public health protocols and changing market conditions.
Restaurants, convenience stores and grocery chain customers can use Zenput to update all of their locations — at the same time — with new processes, promotional campaigns and key initiatives while also gathering data and insights from those locations to find opportunities for improvement.
Joining Golub in the round were existing investors, including Jackson Square Ventures, MHS Capital and Goldcrest Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to more than $47 million, co-founder and CEO Vladik Rikhter told TechCrunch.
Greg Gretsch, founding partner and managing director at Jackson Square Ventures, led Zenput’s Series A round in 2016 and had met Rikhter a year prior. At the time, Rikhter was in the early stages of developing what Gretsch called an organization task manager. While he didn’t invest then, he kept in touch with Rikhter and saw “how much of a grinder he was” in expanding the platform.
“When he sees a problem, he works and works to solve it,” Gretsch said. “Whenever you have a multilocation business, you have a remote management problem. You’re trying to manage everything so your weakest link can perform as best as the best link, but you need a platform to manage that so that you can hold stores accountable to improve the end product.”
Front-line workers use Zenput’s mobile app for onboarding at the beginning of the day and to track safety compliance and fresh food checks, something Rikhter said was historically challenging once a business had thousands of locations. The app can also alert when food has been left out too long to assist in lowering food waste rates.
Since its founding in 2012, Zenput is currently used by customers like Chipotle, Domino’s, P.F. Chang’s, Five Guys, Smart & Final and 7-Eleven in over 60,000 locations across more than 100 countries.
The Series C round comes as the company saw 100% revenue growth over the past year. At the same time, product usage more than doubled at stores, and to date, 1.5 billion questions were answered through Zenput, a figure Rikhter expects to double over the next 12 months as locations aim to find ways to do more things remotely.
“The pandemic inadvertently helped us,” he added. “Initially, it was rough, but then a lot of the brands we dealt with needed to expedite technology and saw an opportunity to invest in our technology. We have more products coming because there is more that can be done to make sure every meal is a safe meal.”
Much of the new funding will go toward building those new products and capabilities and into marketing to expand the customer base. The company recently launched an expansion of its Zenput for Franchisors tool and updates to its food prep labeling and temperature monitoring functions.
Rikhter also plans to double Zenput’s employees over the 16 to 18 months, especially in the product engineering and marketing areas.
All of that is to be ready for customer demand as restaurants, convenience stores and grocery chains do more to change up the way they do business in the future.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to show up at a restaurant and see changes made daily on protocols, which will drive a lot more of the journey than before,” Rikhter said. “We see more operators flexing muscles they didn’t know they had, as it relates to promotions and products, so they can grow faster and run totally different operational features and offer more options for customers.”
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Grove Collaborative, a subscription startup selling ‘household essentials,’ has been quietly raising a lot of moolah
Grove Collaborative, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that sells household, personal care, baby, children’s and pet products, has been busy raising money in 2018, shows two new SEC filings that lists representatives from the company’s earlier investors, including Mayfield, Norwest Venture Partners and MHS Capital, as well as apparent new investor General Atlantic, represented by partner Catherine Beaudoin.
One of the filings shows that Grove Collaborative, which had already raised roughly $62 million as of the start of 2018, subsequently raised $27.4 million more this year. A separate, second filing shows another $76.4 million has been secured in what looks to be a newer round that’s targeting $125 million. It’s a lot of money for such a young company, which suggests it has found traction with a growing customer base.
We’ve reached out to Grove Collaborative and are waiting to learn more.
As we reported back in January, co-founder Stuart Landesberg started the company after working with retail brands during two years as an associate with TPG Capital, which focuses on growth equity and middle-market private equity transactions. With shelf space limited for brands in brick-and-mortar stores, he saw an opportunity for a startup that prompts consumers to buy the kinds of items they buy over and over again just as they are running out of them: think dish soap, pet food, deodorant, vitamins and sunscreen.
Amazon, of course, similarly prompts its customers to buy such items, but Grove Collaborative is marketing to a slightly narrower demographic, that of people who want only all-natural products. In fact, along with the brands that it make it easier for its customers to find — think Method and Mrs. Meyers — the company began selling its own all-natural products this year. Among the many dozens of offerings it now retails under the Grove Collaborative label: a coconut body lotion, a foaming hand soap, coffee filters, soy candles and lip balm.
The move puts the startup in more direct competition with other e-commerce companies, like the consumer goods company Honest Company, which similarly sells natural products for the home and personal care, though many of its products are now sold on shelves in big retail stores like Target.
Grove Collaborative also looks to be competing more directly now with well-funded Brandless, which raised $240 million from SoftBank’s Vision Fund in summer at a valuation of slightly more than $500 million. Brandless also sells its own all-natural household and personal care products, though, unlike Grove Collaborative, it also focuses on food and, unlike Grove, it offers a subscription service, yet does not revolve around one. Grove is exclusively selling an auto-shipment service.
Grove had previously raised two separate rounds of funding in quick succession: a $15 million Series B round it closed in March of 2017, following by a $35 million Series C round it announced in January of this year.
Given that Landesberg was formerly an investor himself, he may well have realized — as have many founders — that raising money next year may be far harder in 2019 than it has been this year. As the CEO of Zymergen, whose giant funding round we recently featured, told Bloomberg last week: “We wanted to have some fat on our bones for sure . . . The time to raise money is when people are giving it to you.”
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Getaround for camera gear ShareGrid raises $1M
Even if you’re an active photo or video creative, chances are that your gear will be gathering dust on a shelf at least part of the time. At the same time, other photographers and filmmakers are in need of equipment. If that sounds like a business opportunity, ShareGrid is way ahead of you, raising $1 million from Archer Gray and MHS Capital to grow beyond its test markets and open… Read More
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