Flashfood Raises $12.3 Million Funding to Scale Grocery Partnerships in Effort to Reduce Retail Food Waste
Flashfood, a mobile marketplace providing customers access to heavily discounted food nearing its best-by date, has announced $12.3 million in Series A funding led by investor S2G Ventures.
Follow-on investment came from ArcTern Ventures and existing investors including General Catalyst, Food Retail Ventures, Rob Gierkink and Alex Moorhead. S2G Ventures managing director and founder of OpenTable, Chuck Templeton, will join the Flashfood board of directors.
The funding will support Flashfood’s continued expansion in the US and enhance the company’s ability to feed more families affordably by working with retailers to sell food that would typically be discarded.
Food wasted by the retail sector in the US represents $37 billion a year in lost value due to the massive volume of surplus food reaching its best-by date before grocery stores have a chance to sell it to shoppers. Flashfood is changing this statistic through a digitally-driven solution for grocery retailers to sell surplus food, reduce shrink and their carbon footprint, while also increasing grocers’ profits. To date, Flashfood has diverted more than 33 million pounds of food from landfills through partnerships with grocery stores throughout the US and Canada.
“This round of funding for Flashfood will allow us to rapidly work toward a more sustainable food system while giving consumers big discounts on groceries, helping them save money and do good for our planet at the same time,” said Josh Domingues, Founder and CEO of Flashfood. “This funding comes at a time when Flashfood is needed more than ever. It will fuel our ability to reach more shoppers and partner with sustainability-minded grocery chains across America. Every stakeholder is winning in this equation!”
The Flashfood app connects shoppers with grocery items nearing their best-by date, offering a discount of up to 50 percent off those items. To-date, Flashfood has saved shoppers more than $100 million on groceries. Today, Flashfood can be found in more than 1200 participating partner stores including GIANT, Stop & Shop, Giant Food of Maryland, Meijer, Tops, Martin’s Markets, Family Fare, Loblaw Companies Limited and more.
“At S2G Ventures, our mission is to back trailblazing entrepreneurs working to build a healthier and more sustainable food system and we’ve seen how Flashfood can help deliver on this vision,” said Chuck Templeton, managing director at S2G. “Through innovation, Flashfood has created a simple way for retailers and consumers to help put a dent in the food waste crisis in a way that creates value for everyone, the retailer, shoppers and the planet. We’re very excited to support the app as they scale their business in the U.S and beyond.”
By downloading the Flashfood app, customers can browse through available deals at any participating store. Shoppers purchase items directly in the app, reducing the need for in-store shopping and then pick up their order any time during the day from the Flashfood zone in their participating store. All participating Flashfood store and distribution center locations can be found via the store locator.