COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--FoodMaven, an innovative tech-enabled marketplace that captures food otherwise lost in the US food system, today announced the close of a $8.6 million Series A financing lead by members of the Walton family. Investors joining the round include: Rajesh Atluru, Robert Finzi, Chris Scoggins, Eric Roza, Jon-Erik Borgen of FirstTracks Ventures, Tom Ahlborg, and a handful of others. Current board member, investor, and former Galvanize co-founder Chris Onan played an active role in this financing.
Each year hundreds of billions of dollars of food is lost in the US food system. FoodMaven applies an innovative logistics model, big data technology, an optimized online marketplace, and sourcing relationships with food suppliers in the system, to both capture and sell this lost food to foodservice buyers that include restaurants, institutional kitchens, and commercial food businesses. Whatever doesn’t rapidly sell, FoodMaven donates for hunger relief, and finds more economically and environmentally enlightened answers than landfills.
“We are deeply grateful for the vote of confidence this financing represents for what we are doing, but also for the shared passion of creating a market-based solution for a number of societal issues that include: food waste, hunger, and negative environmental impacts,” said Patrick Bultema, Chairman, CEO and co-founder of FoodMaven. “Of course, this round also brings the resources we need to continue to rapidly grow the business, not to mention key insights and relationships.”
The financing comes on the heels of a late 2017 announcement that Walter Robb, former Co-CEO of Whole Foods joined as an investor and board member of FoodMaven.
The Series A funding will support the continued buildout of FoodMaven’s logistics capacity, further investment in technology and innovation, the hiring of additional employees to support growth and operations, as well as bringing on a couple key team members to round out the leadership team.
FoodMaven currently serves hundreds of suppliers and buyers in Colorado, refining and building out the model. From this foundation, the company is staging to begin rolling out to metro service areas across the US.
“FoodMaven is a great business with a fantastic mission,” said Chris Onan, FoodMaven board member. “Patrick brought together a high quality investor group in this financing, and I look forward to working with him, the board and the FoodMaven team as the business scales and continues to transform the food industry.”
About FoodMaven
FoodMaven is an innovative online marketplace and rapid logistics company bringing agility and flexibility to the U.S. food system. The company’s goal is to capture and reclaim revenues from lost food, estimated at $200 billion per year. FoodMaven sells high-quality local and oversupplied food from distributors, manufacturers and producers to restaurants and institutional buyers at about half price. With an efficient Internet marketplace, big data optimization technology, and agile logistics model, FoodMaven is good for profits, good for people and good for the planet. For more information, please visit foodmaven.co.
