Toronto-based Flashfood has secured a $12.3 million USD ($15.6 million CAD) Series A round led by S2G Ventures. The round includes follow-on investment from ArcTern Ventures and existing investors including General Catalyst, Food Retail Ventures, serial entrepreneur Rob Gierkink and RHI Group co-founder and executive chairman Alex Moorhead.
S2G Ventures managing director and founder of OpenTable Chuck Templeton will join the Flashfood board of directors.
With its fresh financing, Flashfood intends to continue its expansion in the United States.
Founded in 2016, Flashfood provides a mobile platform that connects people with grocery items approaching their best-by date, offering a discount of up to 50 percent off those items. The company claims it has saved shoppers more than $100 million on groceries.
With its fresh financing, Flashfood intends to continue its expansion in the United States (US) and “enhance the company’s ability to feed more families affordably by working with retailers to sell food that would be typically discarded.”
“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.
Second Harvest, a Toronto organization that redistributes surplus food from the supply chain to agencies such as shelters and summer camps, found that 58 percent of all food produced in Canada is wasted.
In its mission to reduce food waste, Flashfood said it has diverted more than 33 million pounds of food from landfills through partnerships with grocery stores throughout the US and Canada. The company’s platform can be used with over 1,200 participating partner stores including GIANT, Stop & Shop, Giant Food of Maryland, Meijer, Tops, Martin’s Markets, Family Fare, Loblaw Companies Limited, and more.
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Flashfood entered its partnership with Loblaw Company in 2019, marking Flashfood’s first major rollout of its program. Domingues first launched Flashfood in 2017 with Longo’s at Bay and Dundas in Toronto.
In addition to its expanding list of partnerships, Flashfood also previously raised capital to support the growth of the company. It’s total funding to date is $16 million, including a $1.5 million seed round and $140,000 in prize money secured in 2017; and a 2019 round of funding that Flashfood has now confirmed to BetaKit was $4 million.
Feature image from nrd via Unsplash
