Scaling a foodtech DTC brand from MVP to profitability
kencko started as three founders with a new category and a limited runway. Twistag built the subscription platform and a separate operations dashboard the team could run without engineers, and the first order shipped four months after kick-off. Over six years the platform carried the brand through its Series A and a Series B at an $85M valuation, with more than 12 million units shipped and no rebuild.
- $85Mvaluation at Series B
- 12M+units shipped
- 6countries
- 4 monthsfrom kick-off to the first order
- Client
- kencko
- Industry
- Retail & consumer
- Practices
- Product Engineering
- Timeline
- 6 years, ongoing phases
- Stack
- Node.js, React, AWS, Stripe
A new category, no platform to buy.
Twistag built the direct-to-consumer subscription platform behind kencko, a European foodtech brand that reached an $85M valuation at Series B and has shipped more than 12 million cold-pressed smoothies across six countries. kencko came to Twistag as a three-person founding team with a category that did not yet exist and a runway that did. Twistag built a subscription engine on Node.js, React, AWS and Stripe, and — separately — an operations dashboard kencko's own team ran without calling an engineer. The first order shipped four months after kickoff, kencko raised its Series A within eighteen months, and the platform carried six years of business-model change with no rebuild.
kencko's founders believed cold-pressed juice could reach customers on subscription the way coffee-of-the-month clubs had, but without the logistics overhead. The category did not exist, so there was no platform to buy. The first hurdle was software that could carry subscription economics: recurring payments, personalised ordering, customer retention, inventory forecasting across a growing SKU count, and the operational workflows needed to actually ship fresh juice every week. Building in-house meant hiring an engineering team the company could not yet afford, on a timeline that would have consumed the runway. kencko arrived with three founders and one ask: build the platform fast enough to prove product-market fit before capital runs out.
Decide the irreversible part first.
A subscription engine built to change.
Cohorts, flavour rotations, gifting and corporate accounts were planned as shapes the engine would take, on Node.js, React, AWS and Stripe.
Operations without engineers.
A separate dashboard let kencko's team manage inventory, pause and resume subscriptions, run retention campaigns and manage cohorts, so the company grew from three people to fifty without the platform becoming the bottleneck.
Phases set by the business.
An MVP with recurring billing first; then cohorts, gifting, corporate accounts and B2B logistics; then route planning and inventory forecasting as the focus moved to profitability.
Six years, no rebuild.
kencko shipped its first customer order four months after Twistag started work. The company proved subscription retention in the cold-pressed juice category and raised its Series A within eighteen months. By the time Series B closed at an $85M valuation, the platform had delivered twelve million smoothies across six countries, with no rebuild along the way. When fulfilment partners changed, the orchestration layer absorbed it. When corporate gifting became a revenue line, the subscription engine handled it. When unit economics demanded route optimisation, the platform supported an analytics layer without a rewrite.
The platform lasts because it was built to adapt.
- Node.js
- React
- AWS
- Stripe
Twistag built the subscription platform behind kencko, which reached an $85M valuation at Series B and shipped 12 million-plus units.
