Baton Rouge, LA will soon have a new manufacturing presence in the foodservice industry. Cremmjoy, founded by engineer and inventor, Dr. Jason Hugenroth, recently completed its seed funding round to advance its innovative commercial soft serve technology. Cremmjoy raised the funds from 23 private individual and corporate investors spanning 7 states.
Chief Development Officer for Cremmjoy, Danny Fields, shares, “The Cremmjoy technology will disrupt a billion dollar global soft serve industry that has been technologically stagnant for decades. We intend to have Cremmjoy soft serve machines on the market, both domestically and globally in the next few years. We are grateful to these seed round investors for making the commitment to help us further advance the technology and commercialization plan and help us improve the foodservice industry.”
Dr. Hugenroth, Cremmjoy’s President and CEO, who also serves as the President of Inventherm, a Baton Rouge based applied research and product development firm, states that the Cremmjoy technology will be developed and initially manufactured at Inventherm’s facility located at LSU Innovation Park. Hugenroth, an inventor credited with approximately 60 patents, excitedly shared, “Completing a seven-figure seed round strongly indicates that our path forward will continue to be successful. We are making great strides with our technology development and manufacturing plans. These seed funds are essential to that progress and will help us deliver a machine design that will transform the industry.”
Cremmjoy Founder, President & CEO, Dr. Jason Hugenroth (Left) and Chief Development Officer, Danny Fields (Right)
The successful closing of the seed round follows additional fundraising success for the startup company. Since 2021, Inventherm has received $750,000 in USDA SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) funding to support the advancement of the Cremmjoy technology and business plan and to conduct essential food and product safety studies.
Conventional soft serve ice cream, frozen yogurt and frozen beverage machines have historically been a challenge for foodservice operators globally because they require disassembly, cleaning, and sanitizing to keep the product safe for consumption. Operators must disconnect the machines and mark them as out-of-service while they disassemble, clean, and sanitize all parts of the machine that contact liquid mix or frozen product. Cremmjoy’s soft serve machines eliminate the disassembly, cleaning, and sanitization (DCS) process while producing safe, contamination-free soft-serve, and slashing annual operating costs by several thousand dollars per machine.
“Cremmjoy machines freeze and dispense soft-serve ice cream from proprietary packaging. From liquid mix through dispensing, the soft serve mix never touches any part of the machine,” said Hugenroth. “This innovation eliminates the need for machine disassembly, cleaning, and sanitizing by restaurants and retailers and dispenses the safest-to-eat, premium quality ice cream or slush products to consumers.”
Fields, a veteran philanthropy and entrepreneurship consultant, initially joined Hugenroth on the Cremmjoy team as a consultant for Inventherm in 2021, and his position quickly shifted to the CDO role for Cremmjoy, where he leads investor relations and consumer and public affairs. Fields adds, “As we wrap up this seed round, our attention shifts to discussions with regional and global foodservice equipment distributors to demonstrate the technology, understand consumer needs to tailor our initial machine designs, and eventually secure purchases. We have already received significant interest from distributors and operators that we’ve connected with because our technology presents greater value than the conventional machines on the market today.”
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