Collectiv Food, a London-based B2B food marketplace, announced today that it has raised £12 million (~$16.3 million USD) in Series A funding. The round was led by VNV Global, along with VisVires New Protein, Octopus Ventures Norrsken VC, as well as existing investors Partech, Colle Capital and Mustard Seed. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Collectiv Food to £15.8 million (~$21.5 million USD).
Currently servicing Europe, Collectiv operates a network of thousands of food producers that supply items such as meat, seafood, plant-based proteins, dairy, beverages an more. Collectiv’s marketplace allows restaurants, hotels, caterers, meal kits companies, ghost kitchens and more buy food directly from the producers, cutting out the wholesaler middle man and their markup.
In addition to promising cheaper prices for food, Collectiv says it has developed a greener, more sustainable approach to last-mile delivery. Collectiv operates a number of “Points of Delivery” (PODS), which are like chilled shipping containers placed in underutilized parts of a city. Instead of big delivery trucks all coming from a centralized distribution center and driving long delivery routes through a city, Collectiv’s system intelligently routes smaller delivery vehicles from this network of PODS for last mile delivery. The company says this decentralized distribution results in 50 percent less CO2 emissions than traditional last mile shipping methods.
Collectiv is among a number of B2B startups looking to improve our food supply chain. Other players include IFoodDS, which offers a cloud based system that provides more transparency into fresh food supply chains, as well as Shelf Engine and Afresh, which help food buyers better predict inventory needs.
In a press announcement sent to The Spoon, Collectiv said it will use its new funding to further develop its delivery and sourcing models, hire out its team and continue its expansion across Europe.
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