Real-World Testing: TotalCtrl + Ydalir = A Perfect Match
02.05.2025
How can you reduce food waste, save money, and test new technology at the same time? TotalCtrl has the answer and is gaining important momentum and insights from Ydalir Hotel – Nordic Edge ensures that the right players come together.
We get to test our solution in real-life settings, and they get to reduce costs and food waste. It’s a win-win,” says Charlotte Aschim, CEO of TotalCtrl, which has developed solutions to reduce food waste for hotels and restaurants.
Charlotte connected with Ydalir Hotel at Ullandhaug in Stavanger through Nordic Edge’s smart city cluster. TotalCtrl is now testing its solution and technology in real-life conditions within Ydalir’s hotel operations. This is absolutely crucial, she adds.
The road from idea to reality requires testing whether what you want to sell actually meets the market’s needs. Nordic Edge actively works to provide opportunities for testing and piloting for its members.
But finding such collaboration partners isn’t always quick and easy—and as an entrepreneur, there are usually a thousand other urgent things to deal with. They also often lack the necessary network. That’s where Nordic Edge comes in.
“We play an important role as a connector for those within our network,” says Trygve A. Meyer, cluster leader for the smart city cluster at Nordic Edge.
“The goal is to increase the chances of success, which leads to more momentum, higher revenues, and more jobs, by connecting the right players,” he adds.
From Kiwi to Entrepreneur!
After doing daily “expiry date rounds” at Kiwi (a Norwegian grocery store), the founders, Charlotte and Ingrid, had had enough. Every day, about two full shopping carts of food were thrown away. The system they used to monitor products in the store was manual and disorganized.
“Not only did it take a really long time every single day, but the lack of control also meant that a huge amount of food was wasted—completely unnecessarily,” says Charlotte.
Their frustration grew, and Charlotte’s first step toward a solution was to create a manual system with a dedicated “expiry book” that gave an overview of every item. This saved both her and her colleagues time, as they could focus on what actually needed to be checked instead of inspecting the entire store—every single day.
Then, in 2017, the entrepreneurial journey truly began. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals were being widely discussed, and many expressed a desire to reduce food waste. The first prototype was a digital expiry book—a further development of the manual one from Kiwi.
“I taught myself to code on YouTube and created a digital prototype that we launched and sent to online retailers. Suddenly, we got a bite—and that was the start!”
Their first customer was Handleriet. After landing their first client, TotalCtrl received funding from Innovation Norway. Since then, TotalCtrl has delivered solutions to various customers, including Halden municipality, nursing homes, kindergartens, and grocery stores. In other words, they’ve had the chance to test and adapt the solution for a range of users. The result? A 35% reduction in food waste in just one month.
Now, their focus is shifting to the hotel and restaurant industry—a market where the demand for TotalCtrl’s solution is high, and the need is even greater.
“The industry has low margins but high costs. For them, tools that help save time and money—so they can optimize operations—are absolutely essential,” she says.
Nordic Edge as Matchmaker
“Without the network and contacts we gained through Nordic Edge, it would have taken much longer to find collaboration partners like Ydalir.”
TotalCtrl wanted to find test environments to try out their software in real-world settings with real people working in the hotel and restaurant industry. Ydalir was looking for solutions that could make their operations more sustainable while saving time and money. For Nordic Edge, it was obvious that these two innovative companies needed to talk.
“Nordic Edge put us in touch with the management at Ydalir, and just like that, we had landed a great deal after a couple of weeks—one that benefits both of us!”
TotalCtrl is testing its software at Ydalir for four months. The process involves no risk for Ydalir, which only needs to provide input for the software. This saves them significant time that would otherwise be spent manually counting and weighing—potato by potato, loaf by loaf.
“Our job is to know our members and extended network so well that we understand who needs what, and when. It’s a craft. We’re almost like an analog Tinder algorithm. We match people based on knowing them,” explains Trygve. “We’re the connector box—but they have to do the work themselves,” he adds.
Crucial for Success
“You can spend a lot of time, money, and resources developing a product or solution, but it means little if you don’t know whether it actually works in real-life settings,” says Charlotte.
Turning something from a concept on paper into something tangible and visible makes the path forward much easier. It simplifies the process of gaining new customers and partners—and not least, attracting investment—when the solution you’re selling is both tested and validated, and recommended by industry players like Ydalir.
“The value of someone praising what you deliver—and seeing that it benefits them—is enormous, of course. It’s free marketing!”
Too Good to Say No To
“You have to make it easy to say yes!”
According to Charlotte, the key to landing great testing agreements is to make the offer so good that it’s impossible to turn down. It should be simple to carry out, risk-free, and clearly show the potential savings or value the partner can gain from the test. In other words, it should be a win-win.
“My tips are to define the testing period clearly and have a well-structured, simple plan that requires minimal training for the company’s staff,” Charlotte says.
The result? We’ll see when the test period is over. But no matter what the numbers show, the insights Charlotte gains from the testing are invaluable.
“The feedback we receive from this will be useful far beyond the test period. It’s data we would never have had access to otherwise, and it allows us to evolve based on what the market actually needs,” she concludes.
Grow your business. Expand your network.
On behalf of our members, we actively explore new business opportunities and new markets. As a member, you benefit from a high-value network we’ve built and nurtured over the past 10 years. We help you get in the room with your next customer, business partner or investor.
Learn more about Nordic Edge and Tested in the Nordics?
Torill S. Hoel
Business Developer
+47 900 99 349
torill@nordicedge.org
Terje Eide
CEO
+47 911 42 956
terje@nordicedge.org