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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

GrubMarket

Virtual Farmer’s Market Grubmarket Raises $60M

Grubmarket, a kind of virtual farmer’s market, announced today it has raised a $60 million Series D round, according to TechCrunch. The round included participation from BlackRock, Reimagined Ventures, Trinity Capital Investment, Celtic House Venture Partners, Marubeni Ventures, Sixty Degree Capital, and Mojo Partners. It also included participation from existing investors GGV Capital, WI Harper Group, Digital Garage, CentreGold Capital, and Scrum Ventures. It brings Grubmarket’s total funding to roughly $180 million.

Grubmarket founder and CEO Mike Xu also told TC that his company, which is profitable, plans to go public but did not give an exact time for an IPO.

Grubmarket runs a virtual farmer’s market, sourcing food directly from farmers then selling it online to businesses and  individual consumers. Customers can choose from a range of food items from local farms, fisheries, and even some restaurants and meal kit companies. Just as they would on other food delivery marketplaces, customers order their items via the Grubmarket app or website and can either pick them up or have them delivered for a small fee.

The company also operates the WholesaleWare platform, an all-in-one platform for food businesses to manage everything from their inventory and customer relationships to their drivers’ routes and payroll reports. Xu told TC that since the COVID-19 pandemic, sales of WholesaleWare “have seen more than 800% growth over last year.”

That growth shouldn’t surprise too much, as online grocery sales continue trending up in response to the pandemic’s effect on in-store grocery shopping habits. Additionally, we’ve seen an uptick in e-commerce platforms connecting consumers directly to farmers. Chipotle, for example, launched a direct-to-consumer virtual farmer’s market in June, and there are plenty of smaller, regional players, like Good Eggs in San Francisco and Farmdrop in the U.K.

For now, Grubmarket is available to customers in parts of the San Francisco Bay Area as well as Seattle, Michigan, Texas, Boston, and New York, among other places.

Food Tech News: Grubmarket Acquires Boston Organics, Surplus Food App Karma Pivots to Delivery

Here are some things that have been making us feel good lately: pancakes on weekdays, video calls with family, and foodtech news.

We can’t help you with the first two, but we’ve got the latest lineup of foodtech-y stories ready to go. This week we rounded up stories about grocery e-commerce acquisitions, food waste service pivots, and curbside grocery pickup.

Grubmarket acquires Boston Organics
Grocery delivery service Grubmarket announced its acquisition of Boston Organics, an online farm-to-table delivery service, earlier this week. Boston Organics is the first east coast foothold for Grubmarket, which is based in San Francisco. According to a press release this acquisition is part of Grubmarket’s plans to expand nationwide. Over the past year alone, Grubmarket has acquired other artisanal grocery delivery services Doorganics and Eating with the Seasons.

Weis Market and Hannaford restart curbside grocery pickup
East coast grocery chains Weis Markets and Hannaford have restarted their curbside pickup services (via GroceryDive). Both retailers hit pause on curbside pickup in March as COVID-19 started spreading rapidly, but are resuming the service to cater to customers who want to avoid crowds in grocery stores. To minimize contact, cstomers are asked to remain in their vehicles during the pickup and store employees will not accept cash or paper coupons. Both grocers have stated that some items might not be available due to high demand.

Photo: Karma.

Surplus food resale platform Karma pivots to delivery + food boxes
Before COVID-19, Sweden-based startup Karma’s platform partnered with restaurants to sell their surplus food for pickup at a discount. Now, with many foodservice establishments struggling or closing down altogether, Verdict reports that Karma has pivoted to delivery. The service provides its own drivers to deliver cooked restaurant meals, priced at half off, to customers who place an order on the app. Deliveries are available on weekdays up until 7pm, within a 3km radius of the restaurant. Karma is also launching Karma Box, a fruit and vegetable box sourced from their foodservice partners.

Farm-to-Table Delivery Service GrubMarket Raises $25M in New Funding

GrubMarket, a kind of on-demand farmer’s market that will deliver goods right to your door, announced it has raised $25 million in an oversubscribed C1 round (hat tip: TechCrunch). The round — originally meant to be $15 million — was led by WI Harper Group and Digital Garage, with participation from Evolv Ventures, Arancia International Inc., University Growth Fund, and CentreGold Capital. Existing investors also participated: ACE & Company, GGV Capital, Fusion Fund, Bascom Ventures. This latest round brings GrubMarket’s total funding to $89.1 million.

The company sources food directly from farmers then sells it online to individual consumers, businesses, and as wholesale to other businesses. Right now, the company counts WeWork and Whole Foods among its clients.

To use GrubMarket, one need only sign up for an account, fill a shopping cart, and pick a delivery date. You can also opt to pick your order up at a farmer’s market or in some cases directly from the seller. There’s no subscription required to use the site, which offers free delivery on orders over $39.99 and a $5.99 fee for smaller orders.

It’s not a bad deal for sellers, either, who can set up a virtual storefront in minutes on the GrubMarket site and get access to a potentially larger audience through GrubMarket’s customer base.

But as far as that customer base goes, GrubMarket will have to work hard to compete, as it has a growing amount of company in the farm-to-table-delivery space. Farmbox Direct ships its organic produce nationwide. Good Eggs raised a $50 million Series C round in May of 2018, and in Europe, and in the UK, Farmdrop closed a £10 million round to deliver its predominately organic and local goods to consumers.

GrubMarket, who is inching towards an IPO, told TechCrunch it plans to use the $25 million funding for new technology and more acquisitions. It’s done a couple of the latter, including Southern California’s Chasin Foods in January and FarmBox SF in 2016.

For now, the San Francisco-based company only serves counties in the Bay Area: Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, Alameda County, San Francisco County, Contra Costa, and Marin County.