Blue Apron, a startup that aims to help you cook new foods while taking a lot of the inconvenience and waste out of the process, announced today that it has raised a $3 million Series A.
The company delivers fresh ingredients and instructions for up to three meals a week, for $9.99 per person per meal. When we wrote about the company last fall, it was only available in the Northeastern U.S. Now the company says that it delivers to 50 percent of the country (it hasn’t reached the West Coast yet) with 6,000 meals delivered each week. It has also added a vegetarian option.
With the new funding, co-founder and CEO Matt Salzberg said he’s hoping to continue the geographic expansion (it should be nationwide “reasonably soon”) and to add other meal types. It sounds like growing a service like this can get pretty complicated — especially since he thinks of the company as “a food company first and a logistics company second.” He added: “It requires an enormous amount of skill, a network of suppliers, assembling new recipes for people every week, then obviously getting it all across the country.”
But it’s definitely something that I can imagine lots of busy people (who don’t want to eat out or eat prepackaged foods all the time) wanting to use.
The new funding comes from First Round Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Dave Tisch and others. Blue Apron previously raised a $900,000 seed round.
Blue Apron is a New York-based start-up that is changing the way people cook at home. Our weekly subscription service delivers everything you need to make fresh meals. We go shopping for our customers at wholesale, and deliver all the ingredients in exactly the right proportions, along with beautifully printed recipe cards. It’s like having your own private chef– you’ll discover new recipes, eat fresher food, and save both time and money. Learn more at http://www.blueapron.com
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