Virtual food marketplace GrubMarket announced today it has raised $90 million in an oversubscribed Series D round, up from $60 million when the round was first announced in October 2020. Participants include “funds and accounts” managed by BlackRock, ACE & Company, Celtic House Venture Partners, Sixty Degree Capital, The Strand Partners, Reimagined Ventures, Trinity Capital Investment, Madison Bay Capital Partners, Marubeni Ventures, GGV and others.
GrubMarket connects consumers with farmers via an extensive online marketplace where customers can shop for grocery items and some household goods. GrubMarket also has a B2B component through which it sells wholesale goods to grocery retailers, restaurants, corporate offices, and other business settings. The company counts Whole Foods, Kroger, Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, and many other companies among its customers.
Meanwhile, its WholesaleWare platform, which is a software platform food companies can use to manage their businesses. That includes anything from inventory and financial management to HR tasks and driver routing.
Mike Xu, GrubMarket’s CEO, said in a statement that the Series D round was originally intended to be no more than $30 million, and that the company has made “efforts to keep this round $100 million.” He said the new capital will allow the company to invest more in talent, technology, and acquisitions in the future. The company also plans to “expand to most regions of the country” over the next 12 months. In October of 2020, Xu said his company plans to go public, but did not give an exact timeframe for an IPO.
Online grocery as a category is expected to account for 21.5 percent of all grocery sales by 2025, and companies currently offer all manner of takes on the concept. Right now that includes big-box retailers like Walmart, those like Rosie that are focused on independent grocers, and those like Imperfect Foods, which cater to specific niches of the buying public. GrubMarket’s “farm-to-pantry” approach certainly serves a demand, since buying direct from farms has increased among consumers.
But Grubmarket’s focus more and more appears to be on reinventing the supply chain and doing away with some of the inefficiencies there, hence the WholesaleWare platform and the growing B2B customer base. Expect that portion of the business to grow substantially from the new infusion of capital.
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