SpoonRocket finds a home with Brazil-based iFood

SpoonRocket, the on-demand food delivery startup that shut down yesterday in the U.S., has a buyer. That buyer is Brazil-based iFood, a food delivery platform looking to dominate the on-demand economy in Latin America, as well as other emerging economies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

iFood, which has raised nearly $62 million in funding from Latin American commerce platform Movile and British take-out company Just Eat, has been on an acquisition tear in the last couple of years, having bought Brazilian food delivery competitors like Central do Delivery, Papa Rango and Alakarte. SpoonRocket is the company’s 15th acquisition in two years.

iFood plans to use SpoonRocket’s logistics platform to optimize delivery times and order tracking, improve the restaurant-to-customer experience and continue expanding throughout Latin America. Right now, iFood is seeing 1.5 million orders a month and is profitable. Back in June, when Just Eat invested in iFood, it estimated the Brazilian online take-out food market to be worth at least $1.5 billion annually and “potentially multiples” of that.

News of this purchase comes as a bit of a surprise, given that just yesterday, SpoonRocket co-founder Steven Hsiao told TechCrunch’s Josh Constine that it tried to get someone to buy the company, but the acquirer abandoned the deal. That apparently left SpoonRocket with iFood, which had been in talks with SpoonRocket for a couple of weeks, iFood CFO Carlos Eduardo Moyses told TechCrunch.

“They were looking for a buyer to keep it alive in the U.S., but they could not get it together,” Moyses said.

As part of the acquisition SpoonRocket, iFood will work with SpoonRocket’s CTO to help develop the company’s technology into iFood’s platform. It should take about two to three months to fully integrate SpoonRocket’s platform into iFood’s, Moyses said.

“We are very happy to have found a home for our technology with iFood,” Tsui said in a release. “Even though SpoonRocket did not work out, I do believe we have one of the best food delivery systems in the world and it is amazing to see it live on through iFood.”