SAN FRANCISCO — GrubMarket, a San Francisco-based food technology company, has raised $145 million in a heavily oversubscribed Series E funding round from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Liberty Street Funds, Japan Post Capital, Walleye Capital, Celtic House Asia Partners, INP Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures, RIVC and Gaingels, among participants. This round values GrubMarket at over $1 billion.
Founded in 2014, GrubMarket provides food supply chain eCommerce for both business customers and end consumers, as well as providing related software-as-a-service solutions to digitally transform the American food supply chain. The company operates in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Missouri, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and British Columbia (Canada), with plans to expand to other parts of the U.S., Canada, and other parts of the world.
“We have experienced an incredible acceleration of growth in the last 12 months – revenues are up more than 300% over last year, reaching a $1 billion annualized run-rate, while maintaining strong profitability. This milestone was reached ahead of schedule, thanks to our remarkable team and our supporters. Our software was the fastest growing segment, delivering over 3500% of growth and is currently powering up billions of annual business volume for ourselves and our software customers.” said Mike Xu, CEO of GrubMarket. “Delivering ultra-high growth and profitability remains the priority for all of our businesses and geographies. This Series E funding will turbocharge our software and services growth and extend our eCommerce reach from coast to coast. We will increase our investment in people, technology and acquisitions. Moreover, we will continue to operate a sustainable business and maintain profitability as the foundation of this company.”
GrubMarket was a first mover to re-architect the highly intermediated American food supply chain by establishing a producer-centric eCommerce platform with clear price advantages for market participants and exclusive producer / customer relationships. GrubMarket’s customers include tens of thousands of grocery stores, restaurants, offices, online food delivery companies, farms and individual consumers.
This investment round follows a series of major milestones – expanding to more than 14 states in the U.S. and Canada in 2021, becoming one of the largest providers of South American fruits in the U.S., and emerging as a top farm staffing and payroll services provider on the West Coast as well as a major CSA (community-supported agriculture) software provider for American farms. Today, the company operates from over 40 warehouses across North America with plans to both grow in existing geographies and expand to all major metro markets in North America.
“GrubMarket has built a profitable, high-growth business underpinned by its best-in-class technology platform that’s reinventing how businesses access healthy, fresh foods,” said Jack Litowitz, director of strategic investments at Reimagined Ventures, in a statement. “We’re proud to support GrubMarket as it continues to expand into new regions and grow its WholesaleWare 2.0 software platform. At Reimagined Ventures, we always seek to invest in businesses that are disrupting inefficient industries in innovative ways. Mike Xu and the GrubMarket team have built one of these businesses. We’re excited to back their vision and work in making the food supply chain more efficient.”
“GrubMarket is transforming the trillion-dollar food distribution industry with unprecedented speed by implementing advanced digital solutions and operational discipline. The company’s scale, growth, and profitability are extraordinarily impressive. Pegasus is delighted and honored to be a part of GrubMarket’s exciting journey ahead,” added Bill Reichert, partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures.