The funding round, led by WI Harper Group and Digital Garage, included the first-ever investment from Kraft Heinz-backed Evolv Ventures.

Online food seller and technology company GrubMarket last week raised $25 million from a number of investors, including a venture capital fund backed by food and beverage giant Kraft Heinz Co.

Investment firms WI Harper Group and Digital Garage led the GrubMarket funding round, which raised $25 million from a total of 10 investors, according to Crunchbase data. This round brings GrubMarket’s total funding to $89.1 million over five rounds from 33 investors, Crunchbase says.

GrubMarket, formed in 2014, buys local food directly from local farms and other producers and sells it online to restaurants, stores and consumers. In addition to selling and delivering food products as a retailer and wholesaler, GrubMarket is also a software mobile game company.

In February, the company launched GWholesaler, a software-as-a-service platform for food industry suppliers and vendors. The product offers tools designed to help food businesses with financial management, inventory and price management and customer relationship management tasks. In early 2018, GrubMarket unveiled an educational iOS game called FarmBox. In the game, players manage a virtual farm and get rewarded points they can use to purchase virtual goods and farm tools, or real fruits, vegetables, and other products from GrubMarket.

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In January, GrubMarket made its second acquisition when it purchased Chasin Foods, a wholesale distributor of produce, dairy, meats, seafood and other products. In June 2018, GrubMarket bought produce supplier So Cal Farm Network. Terms for those deals were not disclosed.

Among the investors in GrubMarket’s latest funding round was Evolv Ventures, a $100 million fund launched in October by Kraft Heinz to accelerate its exposure to emerging technologies and businesses.

According to its website, Evolv Ventures will focus on four investment areas: food technology, “including food alternatives, next-generation food production, agriculture technology, waste management and sustainability;” industrial technology, including technology related to logistics, warehouse optimization, robotics and food transparency; marketing technology; and direct-to-consumer sales models.

 

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