Mealhero, a Belgium-based frozen meal kit delivery service, has raised €2.5 million (~$2.97M USD) in funding. Mealhero’s CEO, Jeroen Spitaels announced the fundraise via a Linkedin post today (though according to Crunchbase, the close date was November 1).
At the time of this writing, there wasn’t an English press release announcing the funding, so the following details are taken from a Google Translation of a Dutch article running in De Tijd:
The lead investor is Mealhero’s new round is Jan Haspeslagh, whose family is behind the European frozen meal giant Ardo. The founders of Deliverect and Bavet also participated, and this brings Mealhero’s current total funding to €3.5M (~$4.15M USD).
Mealhero is a little different from other players in the meal kit space. It ships frozen ingredients that can be mixed and matched to create different dishes. The frozen ingredients are “cooked” in a steaming device that people rent for €5 a month (~$6 USD).
The article in De Tijd had a number of interesting tidbits from Spitaels, including:
- The company is shipping “tens of thousands” of meals every month
- COVID-19 “turned on the turbo button” for the company. The number of orders during the pandemic has doubled, and the company’s customer base has quadrupled.
- Mealhero is doubling its workforce to 60 employees.
The meal-by-mail space has experienced new life during the pandemic, largely due to the fact that restaurants have had to shut down dine-in operations. Meal kit pioneer Blue Apron said it added 20,000 new customers during the pandemic, while Nestlé recently acquired prepared meal-by-mail service Freshly in a bid to gain a direct-to-consumer distribution network.
Mealhero has expanded into the Netherlands, and has plans to expand to other countries across Europe.
