As the leading AI-powered fresh food technology provider, we’re proud to announce a $115 million Series B funding round led by Spark Capital with participation from Insight Partners, VMG Partners, and Bright Pixel Capital. Walter Robb, senior executive partner at S2G Ventures and former co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, also joined the round. All prior investors, including Maersk Growth, High Sage, and Innovation Endeavors, also participated in the round, bringing our total funding to $148 million. 

Afresh CEO and co-founder Matt Schwartz shared his belief that “food, more so than anything else, shapes the health of people and our planet. We founded Afresh with the purpose of eliminating food waste and making nutritious food more accessible.” Through this capital, we’ll grow the scale and scope of the Afresh platform to serve thousands more stores across the U.S. and Europe and expand to support new fresh categories like meat and bakery.

Scaling our social impact

At Afresh, our mission is to eliminate fresh food waste and increase access for all. Studies have shown that about 40 percent of all food in the U.S. is thrown away, and Project Drawdown cites reducing food waste as the number one lever to curb climate change.

“The transformative results that Afresh provides are not only seen in grocers’ bottom lines but also extend to the impact on our planet through the reduction of food waste,” said Will Reed, General Partner at Spark Capital. “We’re proud to support Afresh through their next stage of growth as they continue on their mission to curb climate change and improve our ability to feed the world in healthy ways.”

Aiming to serve 10 percent of U.S. grocery stores by the end of 2022, we tripled our customer base in 2021, signing regional chains like CUB and national chains like Albertsons, with plans to roll out to more than 2,300 Albertsons stores by the end of 2022. Our recent $115 million Series B round enables us to keep driving toward our vision where everyone has the food they need, and none of it goes to waste.

Investing in a fresh-first future

As the world’s leading solution that’s built to optimize critical functions in fresh food, our technology is in high demand. We’re thrilled to bring more Afreshies onto the team to enable further innovation, boost support functions, enhance product functionality, and expand our reach beyond the U.S. Through this, grocery retailers will be able to provide their customers with the fresh foods they love while prioritizing sustainability, too. 

Afresh sits at an incredible intersection between rocketship financial growth, positive social impact, and cutting-edge technology. We’re proud to say our solution continues to help grocery chains like Albertsons, Fresh Thyme, WinCo Foods, Heinen’s, Save Mart, Cub Foods, and Bashas’ prevent millions of pounds of food from ending up in the landfill.

Enabling transformation across the supply chain

For grocery retailers committed to fresher food, fewer stockouts, and environmentally friendly practices, Afresh is the cornerstone solution that fresh teams know they can rely on. On average, stores using Afresh reduce food waste by 25 percent or more. They also see a 2-4 percent increase in top-line revenue growth and have a 40 percent or more increase in their produce operating margin.

Along with profitability, store employees who use Afresh spend more time on value-added tasks that build basket sizes and customer loyalty. And to top it off, the people who shop in those stores get fresher produce that lasts longer after they take it home.

“Afresh is building a tool for the modern age that not only helps grocers manage fresh categories more effectively but also cuts down on food waste at the retail level, which amounts to 30-35 percent wasted annually,” said Robb. “Additionally, I was impressed by how closely Afresh partners with store teams to ensure its technology is not only easy but empowering to use, effectively enabling grocers to serve the freshest food to their customers.”

Fresh is the future of our food industry

We’re excited to support critical functions across the supply chain and explore how fresh-first tech can have an outsized impact on people, businesses, and the planet. As a company, we’re on track to help retailers save 34 million pounds of food waste by the end of 2022.

With even more mission-driven folks solving the critical challenges of our fresh food supply chain, our climate-critical technology can reach thousands more retailers and benefit millions of people who buy fresh food at grocery stores. As we scale, we’re searching for proactive engineers, data scientists, and account managers who care about the impact they can have with their work.