An Entrepreneur's story - Dan Mazig, founder of Cerve

Can a new food-tech business light the way to radically reduce food waste whilst building stronger collaboration across the industry and opening up new opportunities? 

Introducing Dan Mazig, founder of Cerve 

Cerve is a Swedish based food-tech business, now seeking to enter the UK and which is set to ask some searching questions as it hopes to enable procurement to become more transparent and open. Their mission is to build an integrated supply chain which would allow for stronger collaboration, better communication, and greater efficiencies with the result being a reduction in food waste through better data. 

  It is a bold ambition but one which is clearly coming down the track and which will ask questions of many in food service. It is a natural stage in evolution. 

Cerve is working on establishing Intergrations between food service operators and suppliers. Currently the business is making strong strides forward and is working with over 1000 organisations including suppliers, wholesalers, buying groups, food service operators, retailers, and the public sector.

Any food market or sector can take advantage of Cerve’s technology to fully automate its purchasing activities, positioning the company to become the infrastructure that drives the entire food marketplace ecosystem. 

So what inspired the founder, Dan Mazig, to look at founding Cerve? 

“I was already in the technology field and I was curious about the food industry as I could see that it is directly affected by climate change and has inherent processes which lead to natural large scale food waste.  My question was “how could this be radically reduced?” I also wanted to create an eco-system which all could use to help build a better, more robust approach?” 

It is important to note at this point that Dan is a natural entrepreneur having founded his first business – a social network - at the age of 19 which he sold within two years.  Dan grew up in Israel and found, via sport and basketball that he had a natural competitive drive which lies at the heart of its entrepreneurial desire. As he notes, “Basketball taught me much about myself.  I had the aspiration to play at a high level but the journey in sport taught me to work hard, push myself and be competitive. It is, for many of us, our backgrounds which form our character and drive but sport gave me the disciplines to channel my natural traits.

I love challenges, especially those when I am told that it is not possible, so becoming an entrepreneur was a natural extension to my personal desire to build a business of value, be creative and make a difference. 

After my first business I was fortunate to work with both a number of start-ups and founders but also some major players such as Google and Uber.  The food industry is attractive as the change we can create in this space can have real meaning and value on a number of levels.” 

The business had just begun to find its feet when Covid struck. They had already entered Norway and Sweden and were making genuine progress when suddenly everything came to a halt.  

“Covid, of course, was not what we wanted but it made me think even deeper about the work which needed to search for answers of how we could transform the industry. How can we get to be more transparent and collect better data as this will allow us to cut waste?  Of course, it does mean change for many but it also opens up new opportunities for business.  Stronger data allows us to see where wastage sits and helps to solve the issue”.

Dan now spends his time living in Sweden, with frequent travels the UK, where he leads the Oxfordshire based team. His wife is Swedish and he credits both her and Swedish Culture for bringing new dimensions to his thinking.  “Growing up in Israel was tough at times. I often doubted if I was good enough and this would act as a driver for me to work harder and go the extra mile. Sweden has a great culture which frees up people to be themselves, to think and reflect. I think this has helped as it balances my competitive drive to create change and to make a meaningful difference.” 
My aspiration is to create a business which adds genuine value and has meaning. I am a firm believer that technology can play a key role in reducing the food industry’s impact on the environment. There is a bigger role to play than has yet been achieved. If at the same time, we can create stronger opportunities and better collaboration then there is much to strive for.”