Building and scaling healthy habits for a hungry planet.

Kencko is a smart food company transforming organic fruits & veggies into a pocket-sized instant drink that makes healthy habits effortless.

Challenge

Provide tech mentorship and engineering support to an early-stage FoodTech startup

Kencko was born out of a mission to help people develop healthier eating habits and encourage more nutritious diets through smoothies that can be prepared in seconds by mixing a single sachet with water. Kencko approached us when they were still testing and validating their smoothie product with a small user group of friends & nutrition experts.

In response to the fast and positive feedback from these initial tests, we built and launched an easy-to-use e-commerce website for ordering product samples and gathering user feedback on product refinement ideas before officially launching the brand. Next, we helped Kencko create a robust, subscription-based e-commerce website to order and deliver its mixed-flavor smoothie boxes to a broader audience in Portuguese and American households.

  • — A subscription and e-commerce website within six weeks
  • — Validating new business ideas with tech spikes and prototypes
  • — Providing UX and engineering mentorship to a three-person team
  • — Establish a comprehensive launch and growth marketing plan

Response

Finding easy ways to eat more plants.

Kencko was a three-person startup with early-stage funding when they approached us for help. The company already had a strong brand identity and was looking to convert this into good digital assets and web experiences. Together with Kencko, we defined a flawless customer journey through online marketing channels down to website ordering and checkout processes. Users were able to understand the product benefits and mix-n-match flavors into a customizable box with monthly delivery.

Improve customer experience and empower growth

After the product launch, Kencko rapidly got user traction in Portuguese and American markets. This success brought new logistics and operation management challenges to the company. We stayed on the sideline and helped Kencko adapt to their unique business needs as they surfaced.

First, we helped the logistics and fulfillment teams by optimizing data ingestion and back-office administration features. We improved the marketing automation processes by enabling the sales and marketing teams to better understand their customers, and launch new products and flavors based on user needs determined from data evidence.

Innovation

Improving healthy eating habits.

Through prototyping and tech spikes, we helped Kencko identify and validate new digital products around habit-tracking apps for smartphones and smartwatches, with the primary intent of retaining and tracking healthy habits among customers.

Acquisition

Reach audiences that matter.

Throughout the launching and scaling stages of the business in Portugal and the US, we helped Kencko plan and implement multiple marketing automation, advertising, and social media campaigns, leveraging our team's expertise from launching other consumer brands' products in the past.

Impact

Clear technical direction

When Kencko first approached us as a small team of three people, they needed technical and digital guidance to launch and promote their company to the masses. Through our collaboration, Kencko managed to save on overhead engineering costs during their early stages and relied on our team's expertise to build and launch their multi-platform e-commerce website while developing marketing and growth strategies.

Since then, Kencko has shipped more than 12 million individual smoothies and scaled its team to 50 people and counting.

This steady growth across the US and Portugal has resulted in several funding rounds from multiple investors, including Shilling Capital, Siddhu Capital, Indico Capital, and Nextblue Ventures.

Expertise

  • - Startup studio
  • - User research
  • - Product strategy
  • - E-Commerce development
  • - Marketing automation

Deliverables

  • - UX Design
  • - E-Commerce website
  • - Rapid prototyping
  • - Marketing & grow strategy
  • - Tech mentorship

Industry

  • - E-Commerce
  • - Foodtech & Healthcare

Geopraphy

  • - USA
  • - Portugal

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