Seattle startup Shelf Engine acquired by retail data company Crisp

Seattle startup Shelf Engine, a company helping grocers manage their inventory, has been acquired by Crisp, a New York-based retail data company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2016, Shelf uses machine learning to streamline the ordering process for grocers for perishable items, aiming to help them trim costs and reduce food waste. It raised more than $60 million from investors.

“What started as a side project with my good friend Bede [Jordan] turned into a platform that’s now in over 7,000 stores across the U.S., helping reduce millions of pounds of food waste,” CEO and co-founder Stefan Kalb wrote on LinkedIn. “It’s been 8 years of wild highs, humbling challenges, and so much growth.”

Crisp, also founded in 2016, raised $50 million last year. The company provides software that surfaces sales and inventory data for CPG brands, retailers, and distributors.

Kalb co-founded Shelf Engine in 2016 with Jordan, a Microsoft veteran who was the principal software engineering lead for the company’s HoloLens team.

Kalb got the idea for the company through another startup he co-founded, Molly’s, which provides healthy food to hospitals, grocery stores, coffee shops, gyms and offices. Kalb noticed the difficulty of building efficient fresh food orders and decided to engineer software that helped Molly’s purchase the right amount of bulk food to fulfill customer requests.

Four years ago, Shelf Engine landed celebrity endorsements for its platform thanks to the environmental and social benefits of reducing food waste. Actors Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, Olympic snowboarding gold medalist Shaun White, and Canadian singer/songwriter Shawn Mendes joined as investors.

Other backers include General Catalyst, GGV Capital, Foundational Capital, 1984 Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Founders’ Co-op, Soma Capital, Firebolt Ventures, and Initialized Capital.

The company went through a round of layoffs in 2022.