bitewell – the first-ever corporate food health benefits provider – recently announced an oversubscribed close of their $4 million seed round spearheaded by Lake Nona Sports & Health Tech Fund and Refinery Ventures. The participants in the round include Alex Morgan’s Trybe Ventures, Mudita Venture Partners, Harvest Ridge Capital, and Bertelsmann’s BDMI, among others.
Co-founded by Samantha Citro Alexander and Chris Fanucchi, bitewell is planning to dedicate the funds to their creation of the groundbreaking ‘Food as Health Benefits’ category. And more specifically, bitewell will invest the funds to strengthen its leadership team with best-in-class executive hires, nationally scale its sales division, fund research efforts with leading academic institutions, and build more advanced technology and data infrastructure for the brand.
bitewell’s revolutionary FoodHealth Score – which ranges from 0-10 and uses a simple grey/red/yellow/green color system – is incorporated into its massive food marketplace. And this Score helps users navigate food shopping with customized health goals. Like a credit score for food, every food purchase is scored, and the aggregate Score of all food purchases helps users understand if their diet is net-accretive or net-dilutive to their health.
For the first time, bitewell’s individualized FoodHealth Score enables subscribed employers – and their employees – to buy food based on healthfulness. And bitewell’s marketplace allows users to shop for groceries, restaurant meals, meal kits, and more, applying this health-first lens to more than 85% of the US food supply.
KEY QUOTES:
“bitewell fits perfectly within our thesis of investing in companies bettering human experiences, and we see their contribution through the lens of nutrition and food accessibility. By pushing employers to offer food benefits that provide employees with healthier eating options and give them greater control, transparency, and the capacity to monitor their own health, the company is well-positioned to redefine how the world thinks about health benefits. Sam and Chris possess all the characteristics we look for in founders — operational grit, domain expertise, consumer-obsessed mentality, and are vision-driven. We are excited to see bitewell challenge the status quo in a market ripe for disruption.”
— Justin Driscoll, Associate at Lake Nona Sports & Health Tech Fund
“This is the start of an accelerated growth path to spread foodhealth benefits across the country. We took our time carefully choosing partners who believe wholeheartedly that the future of health is food, just like we do. Looking forward now is both encouraging and empowering, knowing that we have partners who believe in the bitewell mission and will not compromise on our drive to achieve it.”
— Samantha Citro Alexander, co-founder and CEO of bitewell
“Now is the perfect time for a service like bitewell. Employer-sponsored benefit plans persist because employers know the importance of having healthy employees. Healthy nutrition is the next step for companies looking to improve the lives of their staff.”
— Tim Schigel, Managing Partner of Refinery Ventures
