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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

fundraising

Yumi Raises $8M for Weekly Baby Food Delivery Service

Today Yumi, the organic food delivery service for babies and kids, announced it has raised an $8 million strategic round from the founders and CEOs of Warby Parker, Sweetgreen, Uber, and more. This brings the L.A.-based startup’s total funding to $12.1 million.

Founded in 2017, Yumi delivers weekly subscription-based shipments of baby food tailored to meet each child’s specific growth stage and any special dietary needs. The company works with doctors, nutritionists and chefs to develop each of their 70 blended and solid baby foods. Additionally, Yumi sends parents educational info and tips tailored to each kid’s age and developmental stage, as well as previous food orders via the service. Customers can choose subscription plans for one, two or three meals a day, which shakes out to around $5 per meal. Meals are shipped nationwide every week and shipping is free.

Yumi will use its new capital to expand nationally and further develop its proprietary personalized meal planning software.

The average baby food found on supermarket shelves is unappetizing, shelf-stable mush, so it’s no surprise that Yumi is trying to shake up the space with fresh ingredients and D2C delivery. But they’re not alone. Little Spoon and Nurture Life also deliver personalized pre-made baby food. On the more DIY side, Raised Real and Thistle Baby deliver pre-prepped ingredients meant to be steamed and blended at home (though the latter is not currently accepting new customers).

I’m guessing that Yumi is hoping that its data-driven meal customization, as well as its supplementary educational content, is enough to help it stand (er, crawl) out from the crowd. Perhaps its new $8 million in funding will help them do so.

O-M-Series G! DoorDash Raises Another $600 Million

Maybe DoorDash should change its name to MoreCash, because the food delivery company announced today that it has raised another $600 million in funding. This brings the total amount raised by DoorDash to $2 billion.

This Series G round brought in new investors Darsana Capital Partners and Sands Capital, which joined existing investors Coatue Management, Dragoneer, DST Global, Sequoia Capital, Softbank Vision Fund, and Temasek Capital Management. With the new money, DoorDash is now valued at $12.6 billion.

Today’s new funding comes just months after the company raised $400 million in February, which followed a $250 million round in September of last year.

In its corporate blog post announcement, DoorDash said its business has grown 60 percent since that Series F round in Feb., and that year over year, the company grew 280 percent, generating $7.5 billion in gross merchandise value sales (not all of that went to DoorDash as it includes the money that also went to restaurants).

All this growth is one of the reasons my colleague, Jenn Marston, pegged DoorDash as the food delivery company to watch, writing:

Part of those rising sales numbers are no doubt due to DoorDash’s aggressive push across the country. The service is the only third-party delivery service right now to be in all 50 U.S. states, in case you couldn’t tell from the endless numbers of promotions and partnerships the company does with everyone from Canter’s Deli in LA to Taco Bell to the Wyndham Hotels chain. The service is also now in 50 Canadian cities.

DoorDash’s big raise also comes at an interesting time, to say the least, in the food delivery market. Uber’s IPO was a dud despite the strong growth of Uber Eats, taking a bit of the shine off gig economy companies. A more direct comparison would be Postmates, which has also filed to go public. The outcome of that IPO could be more consequential for the future of DoorDash.

In addition to rival food delivery companies, DoorDash faces internal issues as well. It’s been under fire for allegedly pocketing workers tips, and was the target of a boycott for those practices.

More money, more problems.

“Cellular Aquaculture” Company BlueNalu Raises $4.5 Million

By now, you’ve probably heard of cultured (or lab-grown) meat. But what about cultured seafood? That’s what BlueNalu, a San Diego-based startup, is working on.

The company is developing cellular aquaculture, in which living cells are taken from fish and grown, using culture media, to create seafood. Basically it’s cellular agriculture, but for seafood instead of beef or pork.

Today BlueNalu got some new wind in their sales: the company announced that they raised a $4.5 million seed round. New Crop Capital led the round, with participation by 25 VC firms and individuals from the U.S., U.K., Hong Kong, Luxembourg, and Israel (a country which is turning out to be a hotbed of clean meat innovation).

This news is pretty impressive, considering the company was just established two months ago. It also indicates a strong interest in clean seafood. BlueNalu isn’t the only company working in the space; Wild Type is currently developing cultured salmon and Finless Foods is working on lab-grown bluefin tuna. So far this year, both companies have each raised $3.5 million.

There’s no word yet on whether BlueNalu will try to develop their own clean seafood product or license out their cellular aquaculture tech to other companies. But the amount of money they raised mean that people (this reporter included) are pretty excited to see just what exactly cellular aquaculture can do.