[NEWS] Pod Foods gets VC backing to reinvent grocery distribution – Loganspace

Larissa Russell and Fiona Lee based a cookie startup called Green Pea Cookie in 2014. The cookies had been 100% pure, vegan and “handcrafted with love.”

The corporate failed, nonetheless no longer due to this of the cookies weren’t promoting. The industry couldn’t withhold with the antiquated wholesale meals distribution system’s steep charges. Two incumbent players, United Natural Foods Inc. and KeHE Distributors, in actuality managed its fully pathway to grocery stores at some level of the country. So the founders shut down Green Pea and centered their efforts on constructing the design Green Pea had wanted to live to thunder the tale:Pod Foods, a distribution and logistics platform for rising meals brands.

“We had been love so many diversified young entrepreneurs,” Russell, Pod Foods’ chief executive officer, tells TechCrunch. “I had studied executive and economics and did the cookie company due to this of I wanted to compose one thing better for the enviornment nonetheless we realized there used to be a worthy bigger situation at hand and it wasn’t ample to resolve for the stop product, we wanted to resolve for the vogue the product reached shoppers.”

Pod Foods co-founders Fiona Lee (left) and Larissa Russell

“The distribution system hasn’t evolved since World Battle II,” Lee adds. “For thus decades, there’s been little evolution on this station, even since the arrival of technology and the fetch.”

Right this moment, Pod Foods is asserting a $3 million seed round led by Moment Ventures, with participation from M12 andUnshackled Venturesto gasoline the expansion of its tool and data-enabled platform. The capital follows a $250,000 pre-seed funding fromUnshackled, a project capital agency that invests in immigrant founders and, if needed, helps them navigate the complex visa direction of.

Lee immigrated to the U.S. from Singapore five years ago to double down on Green Pea Cookie. Her industry accomplice, Russell, had been handling operations in the U.S. whereas she helped keep the industry from her house country. With Pod Foods up and working, the founders now delight in the different to raise Green Pea aid from the lifeless. As an different, they thunder me their level of curiosity and efforts are fully on scaling their B2B tool upstart. Green Pea is long past for proper.

Pod Foods is an stop-to-stop platform that connects retailers with manufacturers, facilitating the overly complex wholesale-meals distribution market. The startup works with a third-social gathering network that handles each and every success and logistics to compose a tool valuable to rising brands, broad retailers and shoppers. The corporate costs retailers on a subscription foundation and takes a prick of each and every transaction. The stop design is to simplify an age-aged direction of, enable startup brands the different to promote products internal broad retailers and fabricate broad products accessible to customers at a more cost-effective designate.

The San Francisco-based startup has launched in the Bay Space and Chicago. Currently, it’s working with 350 meals brands and 100 retailers. With a peculiar funding deal, Pod Foods plans to scale 10x in the next twelve months.

“We’re searching to change the vogue meals is distributed,” Russell acknowledged. “We’re searching to point out [the system] on its head so the user can ranking what they would really like to bewitch in retail stores at an affordable designate.”