Kanpla - Serving Contract Caterers with Software

Company & Team Introduction

Kanpla is the software/POS system company digitizing the Contract Catering industry. What began as a high school project by Peter Bæch (CEO) and Robert Wolf (CTO) based on their experiences as customers of the Contract Catering industry in 2019 in Aarhus, Denmark. The pair identified that the market was underserved with the modern software that many other industries had. They also recognized other industry challenges, such as food waste, long queues, disconnected systems, and excessive manual work, with existing software not designed for contract catering. This project has rapidly grown into Kanpla, a 45-person rapidly growing team representing 14 nationalities. This diverse, international team is key to Kanpla’s ability to scale across European and global markets.

Product Overview

Kanpla’s core offering is a comprehensive SaaS platform for contract catering operations designed to meet the needs of both catering providers and their customers. Key features of their platform include a modern, intuitive Point-of-Sale system specifically built for canteens and contract catering that allows for faster transactions, integrates with other Kanpla tools and reduces manual errors. Another main component of Kanpla’s offering is their customer-facing Sales & Loyalty app that digitizes the dining experience including features like pre-ordering, personalized offers, and loyalty programs to increase repeat purchases and engagement. Insights from app usage allow caterers to optimize menus, pricing, and marketing strategies. The company also offers hospitality catering tools to manage large-scale events, custom orders, and food inventory. It also helps clients automate administrative tasks and track performance metrics. Another key feature is their Admin Dashboard & Analytics, which offers a real-time overview of canteen performance, user behaviours, and sales data and provides actionable insights to improve decision-making, reduce waste, and increase profitability. By offering end-to-end digitalization for the catering sector, Kanpla reduces inefficiencies, saves costs, and enhances the user experience for both caterers and customers.

Total Addressable Market

Kanpla operates within the global contract catering market, valued at approximately €285B ($300B USD) annually. The market is driven by factors such as a growing corporate focus on sustainability (food waste reduction), the rise of hybrid work models that demand flexibility in food services, and the increasing need for digital transformation among legacy catering providers. The key market segments for Kanpla to win include North America, a dominant region, contributing over $53B annually; Europe, which has a large contract catering market, specifically within corporate dining and education sectors; and APAC and Emerging Markets, which could present opportunities for long-term growth as digital adoption accelerates in the regions.

Business Model & The Numbers

Kanpla operates using a B2B SaaS subscription model, targeting contract caterers and food service providers. They offer a tiered pricing model tailored to the specific needs of each of their clients, while the exact pricing details are not publicly disclosed, their approach considers factors such as business type, number of locations, selected products, usage, etc. This flexible pricing strategy allows Kanpla to accommodate a diverse range of clients, from small-scale operations to large multinational catering services, ensuring that each client receives a solution that aligns with their operational needs and budget constraints. Kanpla has already facilitated over 30M+ product sales through its platform.

Traction

The contract catering market has quickly adopted Kanpla’s products, evident by its impressive growth since its launch in 2019, including over 275,000 active users who rely on Kanpla for their daily dining experiences. The company already serves over 3,000 canteen locations and has expanded from Demark to 10 countries in only 18 months. Among their client base are some big names in the vertical, including Sodexo, Compass Group, and Aramark. Kanpla’s traction displays strong demand and it’s ability to scale rapidly across new regions.

Competitors

The contract catering and food-service management market is enormous but highly fragmented, with competitors ranging from legacy systems to emerging SaaS platforms. Here is a breakdown of Kanpla’s competitive landscape:

Legacy Systems

Traditional systems dominate large parts of the catering industry but are often outdated, inefficient, and unable to integrate with modern tools. These include manual systems, such as pen-and-paper-based tracking, cash registers, or Excel-based workflows, which are still prevalent in smaller canteens and outdated POS Systems, which are legacy solutions with clunky interfaces and no analytics or customer-facing tools.

Kanpla’s Edge lies in offering a modern, cloud-based SaaS platform that integrates POS, loyalty apps, and analytics into a unified solution. Through automation and data-driven insights, it reduces food waste and manual errors.

General POS Platforms

Several companies provide POS systems for food services and retail, though they lack specialization in contract catering. Examples include Square, a popular, general-purpose POS solution for small businesses and cafes, and Lightspeed, a cloud-based POS tailored for restaurants but not optimized for large-scale catering operations.

Kanpla’s Edge lies in its purpose-built software designed specifically for the contract catering industry, addressing niche challenges like hybrid work schedules, event management, sustainability reporting, and provides advanced analytics tailored for multi-location canteens.

Catering Management Platforms

Some platforms offer partial solutions for food service and event catering. One example is CaterTrax, a U.S.-based catering management software with strong inventory and ordering features but lacks customer-facing tools like loyalty programs.

Kanpla’s Edge lies in its combination of POS, customer loyalty tools, and operational dashboards into a seamless ecosystem, reducing the need for multiple vendors and their focus on enhancing user engagement through loyalty programs and pre-ordering capabilities, driving recurring revenue for caterers.

In-House Solutions by Large Caterers

Due to the scale of their operations, global contract catering giants like Compass Group, Sodexo, and Aramark often rely on custom-built, in-house tools. While these systems offer tailored features, they have significant drawbacks. These include high maintenance costs, as custom solutions require ongoing investment in development, updates, and infrastructure, and slow innovation, as internal teams often struggle to innovate as quickly as specialized SaaS providers.

Kanpla’s Edge lies in providing a ready-to-deploy, scalable SaaS solution at a fraction of the cost of in-house development. It offers rapid updates and innovations driven by market feedback and has already formed relationships with major players like Compass Group and Sodexo, proving its product can cost-efficiently meet the demands of enterprise-scale caterers.

Emerging SaaS Platforms

New entrants are beginning to recognize the digital gap in contract catering. These companies pose potential competition but often lack Kanpla’s traction and feature depth. Examples include companies like Nutrislice, a startup that focuses on digital menus and customer engagement for schools and corporate dining but lacks POS and operational features and MealSuite, another startup providing food-service management tools but is focused on the senior care facilities and healthcare vertical.

Kanpla’s Edge lies in its Full-Suite Solution; Kanpla integrates all critical components—POS, loyalty, analytics, and event management—into one platform.

By addressing gaps in legacy systems, outpacing general-purpose platforms, and offering a stronger alternative to in-house solutions, Kanpla stands out as a leading player in the digital transformation of the enormous global contract catering market.

Funding

Kanpla has raised a total of ~€10.65 million across three funding rounds, conveying strong investor confidence in the business’s growth potential. The company’s first funding round was a ~€445K Pre-seed round in December 2021 from an undisclosed group of investors, with funds being used to develop the MVP and validate initial product-market fit. Kanpla’s subsequent funding was announced in January 2023 when the company raised a €2.2M Seed round led by early-stage European VC henQ and participation from existing investors. The capital was used to fund their plans to scale within Denmark and expand into neighbouring European markets. In November 2024, the company announced an €8M Series A round spearheaded again by henQ to accelerate international expansion, particularly targeting the U.S. market, and double the workforce to strengthen product development, sales, and customer success teams.