- Afresh Technologies — an AI-powered fresh food optimization platform for grocers — announced that it has raised $12 million in a Series A follow-on round of funding
Afresh Technologies — an AI-powered fresh food optimization platform for grocers — announced that it has raised $12 million in a Series A follow-on round of funding. The company’s AI solutions give grocers an easier and more accurate way to manage fresh food orders, inventory, and merchandising.
And grocers using the platform have already proven that it helps increase fresh food sales by 3%, reduce in-store food waste by up to 50%, and increase fresh gross margin by 4 percentage points. The funding round — which brings the company’s total amount raised to $20 million — was led by returning investor Innovation Endeavors with participation from Food Retail Ventures, Maersk Growth, Impact Engine, and existing investor Baseline Ventures. This new funding will enable Afresh to accelerate bringing its groundbreaking technology to more grocery partners.
Grocers successfully merchandise and sell hundreds of billions of dollars of fresh food every year. But for decades, consistently optimizing fresh food operations, handling, and merchandising has remained an elusive goal for the industry. And critical processes like in-store ordering are often performed with systems originally built for non-perishables or guided manually.
This costs grocers a tremendous amount of time and energy and produces significant food waste, lost profits, and missed opportunity. And inefficiencies in the fresh food supply chain costs tens of billions of dollars in fresh food waste every year in the U.S. grocery industry alone.
Afresh is the only fresh food (produce, meat, seafood, bakery, food service) optimization company that has developed AI-powered merchandising, ordering, and store operations solutions that significantly reduce food waste, increase food freshness, accelerate stock turns, and improve grocers’ top and bottom lines. And front-line staff on the grocery store floor access Afresh’s applications through an AI-powered app that runs on mobile devices. In partnership with its multiple U.S. grocery customers, Afresh is already used to order billions of dollars of fresh food every year.
KEY QUOTES:
“Grocery stores are the cornerstones of our communities. The current pandemic has re-confirmed the critical role grocers play in our lives. More than ever, these businesses need smart, practical ways to keep stores stocked with fresh, nutritious food, to empower frontline workers, and to run operations in a sustainable and profitable way. Our technologies make it easier for grocers to manage all aspects of their fresh departments, and, in doing so, dramatically expand their profitability by preventing millions and millions of pounds of food waste. We’re excited to use this new funding to bring Afresh to more grocers across the country and around the world.”
— Matt Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of Afresh
“In my twenty years running grocery businesses for Tesco, Carrefour, and Ahold USA, I have honestly never seen a tool that is so easy for the store teams to use for fresh food ordering. The KPIs they are delivering are truly game changing. I am excited that this new investment will allow Afresh to support more grocers in the coming months and help us reduce food waste across the US.”
— James McCann, Chairman and CEO of Food Retail Ventures and former CEO of Ahold USA
