Hungry, a catering market that connects companies with impartial cooks, introduced this week that it has raised $20 million in Collection B funding. Hungry tells me that the funding valued the corporate at greater than $100 million (pre-money).
The buyers had been additionally fairly spectacular: The spherical was led by Evolution VC Partners and former Entire Meals co-CEO Walter Robb, who’s becoming a member of the startup’s board. Kevin Hart, Jay-Z, Los Angeles Rams working again Todd Gurley, former Obama aide Reggie Love and Seattle Seahawks linebacker Bobby Wagner additionally participated.
CEO Jeff Grass stated that he and his co-founders Eman Pahlavani (COO) and Shy Pahlavani (president) bought the thought for the corporate whereas working at their earlier startup LiveSafe.
“LiveSafe was in a meals desert, the place the most effective choices had been Subway and Ruby Tuesday,” Grass stated. “We needed extra genuine meals and we began fascinated with, ‘Is there a greater manner that faucets into native cooks?’”
That finally led to Hungry, which has constructed up a community of impartial cooks in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Atlanta, offering catering to corporations together with Amazon, E-Commerce, Microsoft and BCG. The cooks are all screened by Hungry, they cook dinner out of “ghost kitchens” (industrial kitchens that aren’t hooked up to a restaurant) after which the meals is delivered by the Hungry crew.
“The meals is produced at a a lot decrease value construction than at a restaurant with a retail location,” Grass stated. “And but you’re not sacrificing on high quality. These are high cooks cooking their greatest dishes — you get greater than restaurant-quality meals, however produced at a a lot decrease value.”
He added that this decrease value additionally permits the startup to be beneficiant. Particularly, for each two meals bought, Hungry is meant to donate one meal to finish starvation within the U.S., and it has donated practically 500,000 meals already.
As for the funding, Grass and his crew will use it to increase into new markets — he hopes to be in 23 cities by the top of 2021.
