Sifter.shop Announces First Round Seed Funding for Personalized Nutrition Shopping Platform
Sifter SP, LLC has announced a $4.6 million seed round to accelerate the rollout of its personalized nutrition shopping platform that was built for the 200 million consumers who seek products that match their diet, medical needs and lifestyle. The round was led by Valor Equity Partners through their Valor Siren Ventures fund and Hyde Park Angels, in line with their strategic focus on companies addressing personalized nutrition and wellness.
The Sifter platform utilizes new, proprietary technology to address the convergence of two major trends: the personalization of both nutrition and shopping. Pioneering e-commerce entrepreneurs Andrew and Thomas Parkinson, creators of Peapod – the world’s first online grocery service – and ItemMaster – a leader in complete consumer product data – launched Sifter to address the need for a far more efficient way to shop for special diets and preferences.
“Sifter has the potential to transform how people buy food online,” said Pete Wilkins, Managing Director of HPA. “With this personalized platform, customers can easily find and buy products that align with their nutritional priorities. We are excited to support the team as it continues to grow.”
Sifter is free to use. Shoppers set their own diet criteria via a MyDiet Profile that includes the ability to exclude products with allergens or specific ingredients. And they can set up multiple profiles for themselves and their family members. Sifter’s technology matches only qualified products to the active profile from an assortment of more than 100,000 items. Once the products are selected, shoppers choose one of Sifter’s trusted retail partners to make their purchase. These top-tier partners include Walmart, Amazon, Target, Walgreens, Stop & Shop, Giant and Kroger-owned stores, with many more to be added soon.
The Sifter platform focuses on the $100 billion market driven by special-diet shoppers. This sales growth, accelerated by Covid and an increased interest in health awareness, created urgency for a better online shopping experience, driving more personalization, product discovery and demand for accurate product detail. For instance, 85 million Americans now avoid buying food containing the top allergens such as peanuts, milk and wheat. Until Sifter, reading product labels to “sift” out allergens was tedious and time-consuming.
Sifter’s business model is based on delivering these motivated special diet shoppers to retailers and CPGs seeking a more efficient and targeted engagement. In addition, Sifter is a valuable tool for healthcare professionals and dietitians because it makes it easy to follow critical dietary instructions.
“With 30 years of experience in both online grocery and product data, our passion has been to create a simple, easy-to-use platform that helps people better manage their health through diet and nutrition,” said Andrew Parkinson. “In doing this we also support product discovery by shoppers who value a brand’s benefits, story and mission. I think we’re accomplishing this with Sifter.”