Farmstead, the US online grocery eCommerce platform, raised $7.9 million in a Series A funding round for accelerating the national expansion. Aidenlair Capital led this latest round and brought total funding to $14.5 million. There are also other participants like Maple VC, Duro, Y Combinator, Red Dog Capital, and Heron Rock.
As Farmstead explained, they made the growth “swiftly” during this pandemic. Therefore, with the raise, Farmstead is focusing on securing partnerships with the grocery chain to increase the delivery capacity. It will also expand the national brand.
Farmstead is popular for using AI technology along with a dark store model for the delivery-centric warehouses to serve within the 50-mile radius, to enhance the efficiency with reduced cost.
Farmstead further claims that they provide the consumer prices, which is comparatively lower than the supermarkets yet comes with the doorstep delivery option. Therefore, Farmstead also says that its dark grocery eCommerce platform strategy is effective for easy entry into the new geographies with reduced food waste.
In October, Farmstead announced that they are going to open their first expansion market in the Charlotte of North Carolina. The news also reported about the company’s Grocery OS launch in September to help the grocers take house-step delivery.
Tim Reynders of the Aidenlair Capital said, “In order to fix grocery delivery and make it profitable Farmstead took the bold approach of breaking the traditional model and starting completely from scratch while opening up Grocery OS to other retailers.”
Pradeep Elankumaran, who is the co-founder and CEO of Farmstead, on this matter, said that the Farmstead team has worked hard in 2020 for the perfect dark store model and the related proprietary technology. This has made the company more efficient.
He further added that “This industry has been stagnant for long enough – customers demand change, and we are building the foundation for sustained e-commerce growth in grocery while exceeding their expectations.”