SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Soon, the e-commerce retail landscape is about to witness some drastic changes. Farmstead, one of the first online grocers to deliver fresh, high-quality groceries for free, announced today that it has raised a $7.9M Series A round of funding, led by Aidenlair Capital, to accelerate its national expansion and recruiting. This brings Farmstead’s total funding to date to $14.5M.

“The Farmstead team worked hard in 2020 to perfect the dark store model and the underlying proprietary technology that makes Farmstead so incredibly efficient,” said Pradeep Elankumaran, Co-Founder and CEO of Farmstead. “We are laser-focused on expanding Farmstead’s national brand, and adding more partnerships with grocery chains, helping them increase their daily delivery capacity while driving long sought-after profitability with each order. This industry has been stagnant for long enough—customers demand change, and we are building the foundation for sustained e-commerce growth in grocery while exceeding their expectations.”

Farmstead’s business has grown swiftly in 2020, driven partially by shoppers’ preference for delivery over going to the store during the pandemic. Now, despite stay-at-home orders lifting, Farmstead has found that the vast majority of customers are continuing to use delivery. According to the press release, 75 percent of Farmstead customers are on its free weekly recurring program, ensuring that they have a regular delivery slot each week, plus access to discounts on staples.

Expansion is no stranger to Farmstead. The company doubled its Bay-area delivery radius this past September. Farmstead also released another press release announcing it has expanded into a new market—Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. The news follows the company’s first expansion into the Charlotte, North Carolina, market. To keep up with competing retailers like Amazon, Farmstead launched Grocery OS, to help traditional grocers take delivery in-house.

“In order to fix grocery delivery and make it profitable, Farmstead took the bold approach of breaking the traditional model and starting completely from scratch, while opening up Grocery OS to other retailers,” said Tim Reynders of Aidenlair Capital. “There is an inevitable path to growing an impactful and powerful company, and we see that potential with Farmstead—we’re excited to work with Pradeep, Kevin [Li, Co-Founder], and team to grow the company nationwide.”

Leveraging proprietary AI technology and a dark store model, Farmstead delivers as many as thousands of orders per day. As a result, Farmstead offers consumers prices comparable to or lower than most supermarkets, but with free delivery to doorstep. The company is growing quickly, with plans to expand nationwide to a primarily mid-market audience. The dark grocery store strategy also greatly eases entry into new geographies, reduces food waste by 3–4x, and helps eliminate food deserts by making fast, inexpensive delivery available to a wider area.

How far will e-commerce grow and expand as consumers continue to opt for grocery delivery? AndNowUKnow will report when we find out.

Farmstead