Ben is the Founder and CEO of Hungryroot. Prior to Hungryroot, Ben was a Vice President and General Manager at Groupon, overseeing their food and beverage business. He came to Groupon through the acquisition of Savored, which he founded in 2009. Savored was the nation’s leading provider of yield management technology to the restaurant industry servicing over 2,000 leading restaurants nationwide. Prior to Savored, Ben worked in Merrill Lynch’s technology investment banking group. Ben is graduate of Georgetown University and currently lives in New York City.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a greater part of multiple industries, including groceries. Investments in AI are also increasing as more companies look to technology to remain competitive, and more consumers continue to shop online.
Hungryroot, a startup offering personalized grocery delivery, completed a funding round that brings its valuation to about $750 million, according to a person familiar with the matter, as interest in online food shopping remains elevated during the pandemic.
Online grocery service plans to increase offerings, invest in automation.
Hungryroot is pioneering an entirely new way to grocery shop. We leverage proprietary technology to predict and deliver the groceries and recipes that best suit each individual customer’s needs and goals. The result is a customer-first, curated experience that reduces the average time consumers spend grocery shopping from two to three hours a week, to just two to three minutes. The days of walking into a giant grocery store with an empty cart and browsing through tens of thousands of items will soon be a routine of the past. Hungryroot does the work for customers so they don’t have to.
Every single month has been better than the last month in terms of revenue, in terms of retention, in terms of acquisition. This year, we’ll do $175 million, next year we expect to do over $300 million and maintain our profitability. At that point, the public market is certainly an option that we’re going to be considering.
We plan to use the new funds to expand from about 300 grocery items available each week to 3,000 over the next three years. Additionally, we will invest in new technology to improve our algorithms and automation technology, expand our team further and scale our marketing efforts.