Sprig, the leading on-demand meal service, has raised Series B financing of $45 million USD from lead investor Social Capital and existing investor Greylock Partners. The company also announced it will be expanding its service from San Francisco to cities across the country, beginning first with the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago with more cities by end of 2015. This round paves the way for national availability of Sprig, which enables customers to order healthy, organic and ready-to-eat meals from their smartphone. As part of the funding round, Ted Maidenberg of Social Capital will join Sprig’s Board of Directors, which includes Simon Rothman of Greylock Partners and Sprig co-founder and CEO, Gagan Biyani.
“Sprig has quickly become a phenomenon in San Francisco. To the customer, the value proposition is simple: tap a button on your phone, get a healthy meal in 15 minutes. It’s an experience customers rave about,” said Maidenberg. “Under the hood, this is an incredibly difficult challenge and the Sprig team has figured out how to deliver this at scale. We’re excited to be a partner and help them bring this magical experience to more customers across America.”
Demand for Sprig in San Francisco
In the last 17 months, Sprig has served nearly half a million meals in the city of San Francisco. Since January 2015, the company has increasingly become a habit with customers: the average Sprig customer orders from the service once a week.
Sprig has also had a profound impact on the local community. Since their launch, Sprig has sourced over 400,000lbs of organic produce from dozens of local farmers such as Frazier Farms in Hollister, California and Petaluma Farms in Petaluma, California.
This growth, habitual use and impact on local economies were all key factors for Greylock Partners’ Simon Rothman to invest in Sprig’s Series B. Rothman said, “The Sprig team has cracked the code on making healthy, quick and affordable eating accessible to millions of people with just the press of a button. We’ve been with Gagan and the Sprig team since the beginning, and seen their investment in operational efficiency and laser focus on the customer experience, resulting in incredibly impressive growth. This new round of financing will help accelerate their expansion beyond San Francisco and the growth of their world-class team.”
Expanding to More Cities
Currently available in San Francisco, Sprig will start expanding to the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago, and plans to continue expansion to several more cities later this year.
Given the technology challenges of connecting customers with ready-to-eat-meals in just minutes, Sprig will continue to grow its operations and engineering teams which already include PhD data scientists from UC Berkeley and McGill and product and operation leads from Uber and Lyft. Job openings are posted at https://jobs.lever.co/sprig.
Sprig’s CEO and Co-Founder Gagan Biyani explained, “Sprig is on a mission to make eating well simple. Too often, modern consumers are forced to choose between convenience and quality. With Sprig, you don’t have to compromise. We’re so proud of what our team has already accomplished and today’s funding will help Sprig continue on our mission and bring this experience to more people in more places.”
In addition to Greylock Partners, existing investors Accel Partners, Battery Ventures, Pascal Levy-Garboua, 500 Startups, Ludlow Ventures, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Russ Fradin, Jim Payne, and Justin Waldron all participated in the round, reaffirming their confidence and vision in the Sprig team and its product and vision. Alongside Social Capital, Sprig also welcomes new investors Sozo-Truebridge, Lumia Capital, IDG Ventures, CAA Ventures, Fabrice Grinda, Sam Kass, Jed York, Marc Lasry, Karen Francis, Stewart Butterfield, Brian Spaly, Mark Ayzenshtat, Bryan Goldberg and Amitt Mahajan.