by Lynda Kiernan

Moment Ventures has led a $3 million Seed Round for Pod Foods, a data-driven B2B distribution and logistics platform designed to help emerging food brands reach retail shelves. Return investor Unshackled VC, and M12 also participated in the round. 

Company founders Larissa Russell and Fiona Lee launched Pod Foods after they faced challenges in growing distribution for their former cookie startup, Green Pea Cookie. The pair were able to build a loyal customer base, however, the legacy wholesale distribution system proved to have not evolved to work well with their emerging brand. 

“The distribution system hasn’t evolved since World War II,”  said Lee. “For so many years, there’s been little evolution in this space, even since the advent of technology and the internet.”

What they found was that few dominant distributors purchase foods in bulk at a discount, which they then store, transport, and sell at a markup to retailers –  a system that was often expensive and not a good fit for small food startups, who would be left no option but self-distribution. 

The situation led Russell and Lee to shift direction, leaving off the cookie company to launch Pod Foods, a data-driven, full-service, distribution solution in the form of a B2B wholesale marketplace.

“One of the biggest problems was that when brands worked with distributors, they didn’t know which retailers were actually buying their products,” Russell told 1871 in March of this year. “We knew the importance of those connections and information from our previous business, so we were able to bring that with us.”

“We were like so many other young entrepreneurs,” Russell, CEO of Pod Foods, told TechCrunch. “I had studied government and economics and did the cookie company because I wanted to create something better for the world but we realized there was a much bigger issue at hand and it wasn’t enough to solve for the end product, we needed to solve for the way the product reached consumers.”

Pod Foods’ end-to-end subscription-based platform makes it easy for retailers to source products from emerging brands, who receive consolidated orders through a third-party handler responsible for order fulfillment and logistics. For food startups, this new platform helps them grow their business, while increasing margins, efficiency, and transparency. 

“Pod Foods is transforming the food and beverage industry with a modern, data-centric B2B solution to provide emerging and established brands with a complete solution to cost-effectively reach store shelves across the country,” said Clint Chao, general partner, Moment Ventures. “Their growth in less than a year has been impressive, and we’re thrilled to support them as begin scaling across the country.”

Originally launched in San Francisco, Pod Foods has already expanded into Chicago, and now works with 350 food brands and 100 retailers, with plans to grow by 10 times over the coming year.

 

– Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.