Gavin Pringle (right) JAKAPA CEO Pictured at Founders Only : Summer Camp, with Eli Front of JBSDash.

‘Soft skill’ tracking and improvement platform JAKAPA landed two-locations for a West Coast sandwich shop client, focusing the platforms founder.

“We just closed Ike’s Love and Sandwiches… we’re now focusing on quick service restaurants because they have high turnover and we’re trying to address that issue,” CEO Gavin Pringle told bizblip. “It’s a highly scalable market that we can go into.”

JAKAPA is in the final round of Arch Grant consideration this week, and came to St. Louis from Cape Girardeau after a January 2020 start. It has three full time employees and launched a commercially viable product 10 months ago. Soft skills are usually interpersonal, non-specialized, and difficult to quantify, such as leadership or responsibility.

“We measure, train and track soft skills… the number one reason why an employee is fired or quits,” Pringle said. “We help businesses improve their productivity and decrease turnover.”

The startup has a growing list of clients in a variety of businesses: a school district, a sales bootcamp, a community college and a regional professional development center — but Pringle says the potential for traction in the food industry is significant.

JAKAPA competed in the May 2022 Pitches Get Stitches pitch competition, by bizblip.

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