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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future of Grocery

Will Gopuff’s (Second) Billion-Dollar Funding Round Make its Grocery Competition Go Poof?

In addition to delivering groceries fast, Gopuff is pretty speedy when it comes to raising big sums of money. Bloomberg and Axios both reported yesterday that Gopuff is raising an additional $1 billion in funding, according to sources familiar with the matter. This new money comes just months after Gopuff raised $1.5 billion in March, and will give the company a $15 billion post-money valuation.

Like others in the space, Gopuff operates a network of dark stores in the U.S. that deliver goods like groceries in 30 minutes, 24 hours a day. But unlike its competition here, Gopuff has raised a ton more money. If this latest round does indeed close next week, the company will have raised nearly $3.5 billion since 2015. By comparison, other speedy grocery services have far less funding: Gorillas has raised $335M, Fridge No More raised $16.9M, JOKR raised $170M, and Food Rocket raised $2M.

Gopuff is also a little different from its competitors in its value proposition. Those other services promise super-fast delivery of groceries in as few as 10 minutes. Because they deliver to a very limited radius, they can tailor their inventories to the particular tastes of the neighborhood they serve. But those services are also very small right now. Three are only in New York City (Gorillas, Fridge No More, JOKR), and two are in San Francisco (Food Rocket, Gorillas). Gopuff, on the other hand, has more than 300 facilities operating in 550 cities across the U.S. With another $1 billion, Gopuff can accelerate its expansion and grab market share before the competition can even get out of their hometown.

But speedy, on-demand grocery delivery will soon become commonplace in big cities, if you believe the CEO of Food Rocket. As such, we are starting to see these speedy grocery services start to differentiate. Food Rocket, for instance, is adding branded ready-to-eat meals and ghost kitchens to make even more types of delivery friendly meals. But there, too, goes Gopuff: the company has been hiring out kitchen staff and managers for its own ghost kitchen services so it can deliver its own meals.

Gopuff’s biggest competitor might actually be DoorDash at this point. DoorDash has a nationwide delivery network and infrastructure, is expanding aggressively into grocery, has a ton of money thanks to its IPO, operates its own growing line of delivery only DashMart convenience stores, and has its own ghost kitchen program. With another billion in the bank, Gopuff has the goods and the cash now to have a go at DoorDash.

I quipped on Linkedin earlier this week that it would be weird if your speedy grocery delivery service didn’t raise over $100 million. Given Gopuff’s furious fundraising pace, I might have to adjust my joke.

Instacart and Fabric Partner to Offer Automated Fulfillment to Grocers

Instacart announced today a new multi-year partnership with Fabric that will see the two companies jointly offer automated order fulfillment services to North American grocery retailers.

The new automated fulfillment option will combine Instacart’s e-commerce ordering capabilities and human shoppers with Fabric’s robot-powered item-assembly process. Retailers can outfit this new system inside existing retail spaces or in dedicated warehouses. So customers will place a grocery order online, robots will assemble those items and Instacart shoppers will pack them up and either stage the completed order for curbside pickup or deliver it to the customer’s front door.

The company didn’t provide many details about implementing this new automated system, only saying it is the first phase of its “next-generation fulfillment initiative” and that it “plans to kick off early-stage concept pilots in partnership with Fabric and grocery retail partners over the coming year and beyond.”

Interest in automated fulfillment certainly accelerated over the past year because of the pandemic. Fears of COVID-19 had record amounts of people buying groceries online in the U.S. Those numbers have come down in recent months as the vaccines have rolled out and people feel more comfortable shopping in person. The latest data from Brick Meets Click shows that U.S. online grocery sales for pickup and delivery were $5.3 billion in June, down from its peak of $7.2 billion in June of 2020. If those numbers continue to trend down, will retailers still feel the pressing need to automate?

Big retailers like Albertsons, Kroger and Walmart have all doubled down on their own automated fulfillment plans over the past year. But as Grocery Dive has pointed out, there are still concerns around the efficacy of automated order fulfillment and whether it provides truly valuable productivity gains and return on investment. Now, instead of building their own automated infrastructure, smaller retailers could choose to offload that work to Instacart and Fabric, so we could see more grocers trying these systems out.

AiFi Retrofitting Two More Loop Neighborhood Stores with Cashierless Checkout Tech

AiFi announced today that it is adding its cashierless checkout technology to two Loop Neighborhood store locations in California, starting in the San Francisco Bay Area. The deal expands on an existing partnership that saw the two companies opening a fully autonomous gas station NanoStore in Campbell, California in 2019.

AiFi retrofits stores with cameras to create a computer vision-based cashierless checkout system, allowing customers to walk in, grab what they want, and leave, getting charged automatically on their way out. For these new Loop Neighborhood stores, customers will use the AiFi app to scan a QR code upon entering or leaving the store so they can skip the checkout line.

AiFi x Loop Neighborhood

Cashierless checkout has been gaining momentum throughout 2021, with a number of startups getting funded and system installations going public. It’s been a particularly busy year for AiFi, which entered into a partnership with Dutch convenience store chain Wundermart that will eventually see 1,000 autonomous locations opened up. AiFi also partnered with Verizon to open a 5G-powered popup NanoStore at this year’s Indianapolis 500. Most recently, the company opened an autonomous NanoStore with the Polish convenience chain Żabka.

But AiFi isn’t alone in advancing autonomous retail this year. Zippin has opened up a store in the Barclay’s Center in New York. Trigo is opening cashierless checkout with the Rewe grocery chain in Germany. And Amazon opened up its first full-sized cashierless checkout grocery store in Washington state.

There are a few reasons for all of this accelerated interest in cashierless checkout. First the pandemic (which hasn’t gone away) is pushing retailers to reduce the amount of human-to-human interaction in their stores. Cashierless checkout not only removes a human cashier from the shopping equation, but also means customers don’t have to stand in line next to each other. Additionally, cashierless checkout can benefit the retailer with more real-time insight into shelf inventories. Cameras and sensors keep tabs on what people are picking up and putting back, so managers can identify shortages more quickly.

AiFi’s CEO recently told me that while there is a lot of news and excitement around cashierless checkout, mainstream adoption is still about a decade away. Which means we’ll be writing about similar store openings for a long time to come.

AiFi didn’t disclose exactly where the new cashierless Loop stores will open, but if you’re in the Bay Area and stumble across one, be sure to tell us about your experience with it!

No Foolin’, JOKR Raises $170M Series A for Speedy Grocery Delivery

JOKR is the latest speedy grocery delivery startup to have raised a nine-figure round of funding. The company announced today that it has raised a $170 million a Series A round led by GGV Capital, Balderton Capital and Tiger Global Management. Activant Capital, Greycrot, FJ Labs, Kaszek, Monashees and HV Capital also participated.

Like other startups in the space, JOKR operates a network of small, delivery-only grocery stores that carry a limited number of items and have a small delivery radius. With this model [REWORDED, MAKE SURE IT TRACKS], JOKR can tailor inventory to a specific neighborhood, sell local products (i.e., bakery goods), and deliver within 10 to 15 minutes of the customer placing an order.

JOKR’s big fundraise comes just three months after it started operations and a month and half after it launched its grocery delivery services in New York City. According to a press announcement sent to The Spoon, JOKR said that since it started operations it has opened up a new hub roughly every day and now operates 10 hubs in New York, and 100 hubs across nine cities including São Paolo, Brazil; Mexico City, Mexico; Bogota, Colombia; Lima, Peru; Warsaw, Poland; and Vienna, Austria.

Of course, JOKR isn’t the only speedy grocery delivery service bringing in big funding. In fact, it would be odd if JOKR hadn’t raised more than $100 million. Gopuff raised $1.5 billion in March to grow its delivery service. Last month Germany’s Flink raised $240 million, and Turkey’s Getir raised $550 million (after raising $300 million in March). Germany-based Gorillas raised $290 million in March, launched its own U.S. operations in NYC at the end of May, and is already expanding to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Vitaly Alexandrov, CEO of the San Francisco-based Food Rocket speedy grocery service, recently told me that in order for his business to work, one hub needs to be able to service 50,000 households. That means that at some point not too far off, all of these services are going to be vying for the same markets. Alexandrov said that eventually 10-minute grocery delivery will become a commodity, which is why Food Rocket is looking to differentiate itself with ready to eat meals, ghost kitchens and will eventually open up its logistics and delivery platform to other retailers. Gopuff too, is diversifying by getting into the ghost kitchen business as well.

Despite all this funding, we don’t yet know if or how consumers will take to this new, utility-style model of grocery shopping. Many of these services don’t have order minimums or delivery fees, but will that be sustainable as they scale? Will consumers place large enough orders to keep these businesses going or will these services burn out a la Kozmo.com?

We’ll learn the answers to these questions over the coming months but one thing we know already: Most of these startups won’t fail because of a lack of funding.

Halla Raises $4.5M for Its Food Recommendation Platform

Halla, the AI-powered production recommendation service for grocery retail, announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in Series A1 funding, led by Food Retail Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Halla to $8.5 million.

Halla’s platform integrates with a grocer’s existing digital commerce solution to provide customized product recommendations and substitutions for out of stock items to consumers. But Halla’s platform doesn’t just rely on previous purchases to make its recommendations. The company says it uses more than 100 billion shopper and product data points to predict what a shopper is looking for. Halla’s product video embedded below illustrates how Halla’s the system looks at all kinds of data about a shopper as it makes a recommendation in real time.

Grocery has been the beneficiary of a ton of funding this year, with $10 billion going into the sector as of July this year. Most of of the funding and attention has been around speedy grocery delivery services, but money has been doled out to startups working up and down the grocery stack. Hungryroot, and online grocer that uses machine learning for predictive recommendations, raised $40 million last month. In April, Trax raised $640 million for its computer vision-based inventory management system, and Shelf Engine raised $41 million for its perishable inventory management platform.

A big reason for all this money flowing into grocery is the pandemic. Fears around COVID-19 sent record amounts of people into online grocery shopping last year, creating new logistical and fulfillment issues for retailers. But the pandemic also highlighted flaws in our existing grocery supply chain, as evidenced by the panic hoarding and empty shelves that happened at the beginning of the outbreak. All of this is to say there are a bunch of new issues for grocery retailers to solve post-pandemic, which means plenty of opportunities for startups.

Halla said that a “top-5 U.S. grocer” is currently running Halla in more than 1,100 e-commerce storefronts. Halla will use the new funding to double the number of stores it’s in, and double its headcount by 2022.

Uber Expands Grocery Delivery to 400 US Cities, Adds Albertsons Brands as Partners

Uber’s grocery delivery service is now available in more than 400 cities across the U.S., according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. The company has also added Albertsons retail brands to its delivery platform.

The move marks a big jump for Uber, which started its grocery delivery business in the U.S. a little more than a year ago, growing it to 100 cities. With today’s expansion, Uber’s grocery delivery will be available in major markets such as Miami, Dallas, New York City, Washington D.C. and for the first time in California by way of San Francisco.

At the same time, Uber also bulked up its retail partnerships with the addition of Albertsons stores to its platforms. Over the course of this year, Uber will roll out delivery to 1,200 Albertsons stores including Albertsons, Safeway, Jewel-Osco, ACME, Tom Thumb, Randalls and more.

Uber got into the grocery delivery game in July of 2020 following its purchase of a majority stake in Latin American online grocery delivery marketplace Cornershop in 2019. Since that time, grocery delivery has seen an explosion in usage, thanks in large part to the pandemic, which makes it an attractive market for a logistics company like Uber. Last month, SEC filings showed that Uber was acquiring the remaining 47 percent of Cornershop.

Unlike the modern ride sharing-business, which Uber basically invented, the company will be facing a lot of competition for your grocery delivery dollar. DoorDash, which started out in restaurant delivery has made its own aggressive moves into grocery delivery and announced its own partnership with Albertsons last month. And of course Uber will be going up against Instacart, the 800-pound gorilla in third-party grocery delivery.

But perhaps the more interesting competition in major cities for Uber will come from the rapidly expanding speedy grocery delivery startups, which promise to get you your groceries in as few as 10 minutes. Services like JOKR and Fridge No More are expanding across New York City. Gorillas is hopping beyond New York and into San Francisco, where Food Rocket also operates.

These services all operate small, delivery-only grocery stores with a limited delivery radius. They are also vertically integrated, controlling their inventory and employing their own drivers. As Food Rocket CEO, Vitaly Alexandrov recently told me, having their own fleet of delivery people gives his company an advantage over services like Uber and Instacart. When an order is placed by the customer, the network doesn’t have to spend time finding a driver who will take the job. There is already a dedicated staffer on hand to make deliveries go out faster.

DoorDash operates its own line of DashMart delivery-only convenience stores, and Instacart is reportedly looking to build out its own automated fulfillment centers. With all this competition, will Uber, which has famously built its empire by emphatically not owning parts of its business like its driver network, need to cave and develop a more owned and operated stack?

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First we’ll have to see if Uber customers will even use Uber for grocery delivery on a massive scale.

Afresh CEO Matt Schwartz Explains How AI Can Help Grocery Retailers Place “the Perfect” Order

For grocery stores, measuring demand and managing orders for fresh foods can be a maddeningly difficult task that more often than not ends in lots of unused food getting thrown out. After all, bananas have a much shorter shelf life than, say, a bag of rice, and a lot of existing supply-chain technologies and processes were designed with the latter in mind.

“Existing tools don’t work for fresh food,” says Matt Schwartz CEO and cofounder of a San Francisco, California-based tech company called Afresh.

Afresh often gets labeled a “food waste” company and listed among other efforts to curb the problem of food waste at consumer-facing outlets like grocery stores. While Afresh’s store-level ordering platform can certainly help grocery retailers cut down on food waste, that’s not necessarily the main driving force behind the company. 

Over a call recently, Schwartz told The Spoon he thinks of Afresh as more of a “fresh food company” than food waste company. The system uses AI to analyze store-level data around customer demand, shipments of fresh food, sales of it, pricing and other factors. Gathering all that disparate data together, the system then makes ordering recommendations for grocers to help them create what Schwartz calls “the perfect order.” That is, “an amount that keeps you in stock for the shopper but also doesn’t cause you to drive waste from having it sit there.”

By way of example, he says it’s the difference between 14 cases of blueberries and 18: “Those four cases make all the difference when it comes to billions of pounds of waste.” 

Getting that perfect number can be complicated. Continuing with the blueberry example, Schwartz says there are a few major things grocery retailers have to consider, the first of them being customer demand. In other words, How many blueberries will shoppers want over the next few days? Retailers also have to consider existing store inventory, which can be tricky to calculate for something like berries. 

Reconciling these two things — how much a retailer has versus how much they think they will sell, also requires other types of data. That includes how many cases the shelf can hold, the shelf life of the blueberries, and the frequency of shipments, to name a few. The Afresh system connects to grocery retailers’ existing systems, then compiles the above data into a single place that a retailer making an order can view from an iPad.  

“In the long term our systems will drive decisions around inventory, forecasting, etc.,” said Schwartz.  

In a recent post for The Spoon, food tech investors Seana Day and Brita Rosenheim noted that “increased workflow and data automation solutions in the food supply chain holds significant power to help the food supply chain leapfrog into digitalization.” That includes grocery retailers, and Afresh is among several companies trying to enable this leapfrog movement. Seattle, Washington-based ShelfEngine offers a similar fresh food inventory management platform, as does a company called Crisp. Rising consumer demand for both fresh food and a more reliable supply chain (hello, panic shopping) mean we can expect a lot more software in this area in the near future.

For its part, Afresh is currently live in hundreds of stores, says Schwartz. He declined to name specific stores or chains, but said his company’s biggest partner does about $10 billion in sales every year. 

The company has raised a total of $32.8 million to date, with its most recent round being a Series A fundraise towards the end of 2020.

Food Rocket Going Beyond Speedy Grocery Through Ghost Kitchens and an Open Platform

The sudden proliferation of speedy grocery delivery startups like San Francisco’s Food Rocket has been one of the bigger food tech stories of 2021. But for Vitaly Alexandrov, Co-Founder, and CEO of Food Rocket, fast grocery delivery is just a step to a much larger play.

“In a year or two years, it will be like a commodity,” Alexandrov said of fast grocery delivery during a video chat this week, “Everyone will deliver in ten minutes.”

And he’s probably right. Throughout this year we’ve seen a number of players pop up offering on-demand, ten-minute style grocery delivery through a network of small, dark stores with a limited delivery radius. Most of the activity has been in Europe so far with companies like Getir, Glovo and Gorillas all raising big money and expanding rapidly. But we are starting to see more startups show up here in the U.S., especially in New York City. Fridge No More, JOKR and Gorillas all operate in the Big Apple, and Gorillas recently announced its jumping across the country to open up stores in Food Rocket’s hometown of San Francisco.

But Alexandrov isn’t worried about Gorillas, or any of the other competitors that will undoubtedly come to his hometown, in fact he welcomes them. “When there are many competitors, the market grows faster,” he said. The idea of ten minute grocery delivery is very new, and customers need to learn a whole new way of treating grocery shopping more like a utility. Alexandrov said that more competitors in a market vying for customers means there are more companies educating customers about this new type of service. The result is a larger pool of knowledgeable customers and that rising tide should lift all (speedy) boats.

If that does play out, and that’s a big IF as we still need to see if these speedy grocery startups can scale, how will each service differentiate themselves? For Food Rocket there are two phases to its future growth. Alexandrov said in the near term, one of the ways Food Rocket will stand out is by offering its own line of ready to eat meals. To do this, the company will add ghost kitchens to its operational network. So in addition to staples like milk and eggs, you could also get your lunch or dinner delivered, and menus can be tailored to tastes of the specific neighborhood served.

The second phase of its future involves opening up its platform to other retailers. Over the next three years, Food Rocket will continue to build out its network and fine-tune its inventory management, fulfillment and delivery routing systems. At that point, Food Rocket could allow a more traditional retailer like Albertsons or Kroger to use its platform for fast delivery, and it’s easy to see why retailers could be interested.

If Food Rocket’s type of fast delivery catches on with consumers, two-hour or even half-hour delivery of groceries could be considered too slow. Instead of building out their own speedy delivery infrastructure, retailers could just use Food Rocket’s and launch immediately wherever Food Rocket is operating. It’s similar to the way retailers partnered with Instacart to establish delivery (and it could carry the same pitfalls). Though Alexandrov says it beats existing third party services because Food Rocket delivery people are employees — not contractors. So when an order comes in, the system doesn’t have to take the time to find a driver willing to fulfill the order (of course, having employees also drives Food Rocket’s costs up).

But that vision of Food Rocket’s future is still a ways off, and a lot needs to happen before that vision can pan out. More immediately for Food Rocket, Alexandrov told me that the company’s next move is expanding to cover roughly 95 percent of San Francisco by September and then it’s on to Los Angeles, where Food Rocket has already signed leases in West Hollywood and Santa Monica. Alexandrov said that in order for the business to work, stores need to be set up in locations where its limited delivery radius can cover 50,000 homes. That means Food Rocket won’t be coming to my rural neck of the woods anytime soon, but it, along with the other speedy delivery startups, may be taking off in a city near you soon.

Verve Motion Hauls in $15M for its Exosuit, Which Ahold Delhaize Piloted

For workers who spend their days moving heavy things, the refrain “lift with your legs and not with your back,” could soon become “lift with your legs while wearing the high-tech exosuit.” Verve Motion, which makes just such an exosuit that assists people when picking up objects, has raised $15 million, TechCrunch was first to report today. This Series A round was led by Construct Capital with participation from existing investors, such as Founder Collective, Pillar VC, Safar Partners and OUP.

Verve Motion’s SafeLift suit sounds like something straight out of a Marvel movie. From the product description on the company’s website:

The technology behind SafeLift has been developed at Harvard over the past decade, and is based on the latest advances in robotics, apparel design, and movement science. The suit applies assistance in parallel with the user’s muscles and responds to their movement in milliseconds. It combines state-of-the-art motion tracking technology with powerful robotic actuators and integrates it all into a lightweight and easily wearable device that doesn’t restrict normal activities.

As The Wall Street Journal reported last month, Verve Motion’s suit was piloted by Ahold Delhaize last year to help warehouse workers who assembled goods for retail outlets and e-commerce orders. The suit doesn’t grant superhuman strength like the power loader from Aliens. Instead, it reduces strain associated with doing the literal heavy lifting at work. Verve Motion says that the SafeLift can reduce strain by 30 percent when performing strenuous tasks, resulting in fewer injuries and lower fatigue rates.

The technology is still new and as the WSJ points out, exosuits like this should be studied for any long-term impacts on workers. But should exosuits prove to be a safe and effective way for workers to move boxes of groceries around in a fulfillment center, we could see increased adoption of the technology. Online grocery sales were $7 billion in May of this year, and e-commerce is expected to a be a pandemic-borne habit that sticks with consumers going forward. As a result, grocery retailers will need ways to fulfill all those orders. Some retailers are adopting robotic fulfillment solutions a la Ocado or Takeoff, but exosuits could prove to be another great fit as well.

Shopic Raises $10M for its Clip-On Smart Cart Cashierless Checkout Solution

Smart shopping cart startup Shopic announced today that it has raised $10 million in equity funding. The round was led by Claridge Israel, with participation from existing investors Entrée Capital, IBI Tech Fund, and Tal Capital. This brings the total amount raised by Shopic to $21 million.

The Tel Aviv, Israel-based Shopic creates cashierless checkout retail experiences through its a device that clips on to the handles of existing shopping carts. The Shopic device has cameras and a touchscreen, and uses computer vision to recognize products placed inside the cart. The Shopic system keeps tally of everything in the cart and ties in with a store’s POS so customers can skip the checkout line and get charged automatically upon leaving.

Shopic also promotes its smart carts as advertising vehicles and real-time inventory management systems. In addition to presenting an ongoing receipt as people shop, the touchscreen can also display customized digital promotions and ads based on data such as a customer’s shopping history. Because Shopic’s system is keeping track of what items are placed in the cart (and taken out) and when, it also provides real-time inventory insight as well as information about how customers shop.

The cashierless checkout space has seen a ton of funding and installation activity around the world so far this year. There are a number of solutions coming to market including retrofitting stores with cameras (Trigo, Grabango) and smart shopping carts (Caper, Veeve). Even Shopic’s very specific sub-section of turning existing shopping carts into smart carts is getting crowded, with other players such as SAI, WalkOut and Nomitri vying for grocery retailer dollars as well.

All of this action illustrates how adoption of cashierless checkout is certainly accelerating, thanks in part to its contactless nature and fears stirred by the pandemic. But despite all the funding and the momentum, it will still be awhile before it crosses over into the mainstream. I recently spoke with the CEOs of cashierless checkout startups Trigo and AiFi. The Trigo CEO believes we’ll see cahierless checkout options in every major city of the world as early as next year. That could mean there’s just one store offering it, however. AiFi’s CEO said we’re about a decade away from cashierless checkout becoming mainstream.

In its press announcement today, Shopic said that it is already deploying solutions with major grocery chains around the world, and will use its new funding to accelerate commercial activities and expand its team.

Gorillas is Hiring Up to Expand its 10-Minute Grocery to San Francisco, LA and Chicago

As of now, New Yorkers have just about all the fun when it comes to super speedy grocery delivery in the U.S. Companies like Fridge No More, JOKR, Gorillas and, starting next month, Buyk are all building out a network of small, delivery-only grocery stores that promise to deliver your food in as few as ten minutes

But based on its current job listings, Gorillas is prepping to make a move out west. The company is currently hiring the following positions:

Germany-based Gorillas certainly has the cash to fuel such expansion. The company just raised $290 million in March, and has raised $335 million in total. There also currently isn’t that much competition in terms of speedy delivery grocery services on the West Coast. Food Rocket launched 15-minute grocery delivery in San Francisco at the end of May. Gopuff has a number of locations across California (and Chicago), though its delivery times are a comparatively “sluggish” 30 minutes.

Gorillas, like its rivals, operates dark stores in neighborhoods that have a limited delivery radius of typically one to one and a half miles. The economics of that certainly works in densely packed urban areas like New York, Chicago or even San Francisco, but Los Angeles is sprawling (though it does have a ton of people). I’m curious to see which neighborhoods Gorillas will start with and how it will expand.

As I’ve said before, I believe this new crop of speedy delivery services are not the next Kozmo.com’s. and they have the potential to turn grocery shopping into an on-demand utility. There is power in the idea of ordering a pint of ice cream and having it arrive at your doorstep 10 minutes later, and it could upend traditional notions of going to the grocery store in person (moreso than the pandemic did).

We’ll have to wait and see on that front, but in the meantime, one good thing about the Gorillas job openings is that they are all full-time with benefits, even the delivery driver position.

South Korea: Online Grocer Kurly Raises $200M Series F

Kurly, the South Korean startup behind online grocery service Market Kurly, announced today that it has raised a $200 million Series F round of funding. The Korea JoongAng Daily reports that this latest round was led by existing investors such as Aspex Management, DST Global, Sequoia Capital China, along with new investors like Millennium Management and CJ Logistics. This brings the total amount of money raised by Kurly to $428 million and gives the company a $2.2 billion valuation.

At the same time, Kurly also said that it would no longer seek to go public on U.S. stock exchanges and will instead IPO on a Korean stock exchange. For more on that, The Korea Economic Daily has some good background and context as to why Kurly may have made its stock market switch.

Here at The Spoon, we are more interested in the food tech angle, and Kurly is just the latest example of an online grocery startup raising big money. According to PitchBook data released last week, investors have poured more than $10 billion into grocery startups in 2021. Kurly’s $200M Series F is downright quaint compared to the $3 billion raised by Xingsheng Youxuan, or the $1.5 billion raised by Gopuff, or the $850 million raised by Getir.

Kurly’s business is also a little more traditional than many of the grocery startups raising money right now. Unlike Gopuff and Getir and the raft of smaller companies promising grocery delivery in just 10 minutes, Kurly offers its customers next-day delivery. What it lacks in speed however, it more than makes up for in size as it provides its service across South Korea.

The pandemic has driven a good deal of interest and investment in the online grocery sector. Fears of COVID-19 drove people into online grocery last year. And while online grocery sales have come down (at least in the U.S.) as vaccinations have rolled out, there is some market research showing this new e-grocery behavior will stick with consumers. Now we’ll have to see what post-pandemic reactions to online grocery are around the globe (and if it was worth all the investment).