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However, the New York-based 15-minute grocery delivery service aims to be much more for its customers — a go-to replacement for your grocery store.

“We believe this space is important and will change the way people buy their groceries,” company co-founder told Crunchbase News. “The idea is pretty crazy for markets, and some people don’t think they need something like this, but we think people will shift from ordering once a week to more.”

Fridge No More, which is available via your phone, received $15.4 million in funding to bring on additional staff and expand across New York City and the East Coast.

led the round, which also included existing investor . In addition to the new capital, the company previously raised $1.5 million nearly a year ago to build its first locations in Brooklyn, Fridge No More co-founder said in an interview.

The company’s concept was initiated a few years ago and formalized in March 2020. Then in October, Fridge No More made its first delivery.

Fridge No More has warehouse space with more than 2,000 SKUs and offers free instant delivery, no minimum order and prices that rival the supermarket, Danilov said. It also created a proprietary, data platform for inventory and order management that is optimized based on store-specific customer demand.

The new funding will be used to grow the engineering and operations team, as well as into marketing and expanding its locations. Fridge No More is in four locations and is targeting 40 more across Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens.

Since delivering its first order last October, the company now has more than 2,000 customers and is averaging 200 orders per day at an average cart size of $40.

“Customers who make their first purchase become regular customers and are ordering weekly or a few times per week,” Danilov said.

Market growth

E-grocery sales are expected to jump from nearly $35 billion to more than $250 billion, by grocery e-commerce specialist and research firm . Their study forecasts that online grocery sales are poised to reach 21.5 percent of total U.S. grocery sales by 2025.

In 2020, online grocery’s percentage of the $1.04 trillion grocery market was estimated at 10.2 percent, or about $106 billion, up from 3.4 percent, or $34.54 billion, of the $1.02 trillion market in 2019.

At the same time, 125 have raised approximately $6.3 billion since 2017, according to Crunchbase data. Leading this group is Philadelphia-based , which delivers everyday essentials, including food and drinks, in minutes, raising $750 million in a 2019 venture round.

What investors have to say

Meanwhile, , principal at Insight Partners, said in an interview that the firm was monitoring the e-grocery market for a while. Fridge No More was creating a new category within the space, and when customers try it out, keep using it, she said.

“We are tracking a lot of new entrants, and this space will get competitive over the next six to 18 months,” Liu-Doyle said. “It is a really complicated business to run. To Pavel and Anton’s point, they are dealing with warehouses, perishable inventory and trying to deliver on high consumer expectations. The consumer is unforgiving, you have to make count. We’ve looked at several of these, and what impressed us was Pavel and Anton’s real product intuition, and how maniacally focused they are.”

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The purchase price is comprised of a mix of cash and DoorDash stock, according to

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“This transaction allows us to increase our focus on and investment in our two large, growing ecosystems—one for businesses and one for individuals,” Square wrote in its letter. “It creates clarity in how we operate and a clearer purpose and alignment for our planning, investment, and work moving forward.”

DoorDash has a pre-existing relationship with Square. It partners with Square for restaurants to enhance online and in-person orders for merchants. Founded in 2013, DoorDash has raised during its life as a private company.

“We believe continuing this partnership provides valuable and strategic opportunities for Square,” the San Francisco payment processing company stated.

This isn’t the first time Square has tried to sell Caviar.

in 2016 that the payment processing company wanted to step away from food delivery and tried selling the company to Uber, GrubHub, and Yelp. In 2016, the proposed price for DoorDash was $100 million.

Since Square bought Caviar in 2014, the business unit has struggled to turn a profit, maintaining regular losses. Square may come out financially whole in the end, however. Given the gap between the purported purchase price and the final sale price, our guess is Square is making up reasonable value through the sale.

Of course the value of DoorDash stock could decline, limiting Square’s upside.

DoorDash has been on a tear in recent quarters, raising , , and all inside the last twelve months. (The Series E was announced on August 16, 2018.)

Let’s all remember that DoorDash is under fire for controversial, and possibly . Buying Caviar might tell us that it certainly had the money to scoop up a company.

The food delivery space is heating up. On page 4 of , it states that the online food-ordering market generated approximately $27 billion sales in 2018 and is expected to grow at a double-digit rate through 2020.  with its product, DoorDash, , and others are battling for market share and, eventually, margins. Today the competition between the competing players seems to be more focused on revenue than profits. The unprofitable Caviar will supply fresh growth to its new parent company, but little in the way of net income.

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The food delivery service’s Series G included new investors and.  Previous investors also joined in including , , , , , and Temasek Capital Management.

The company’s quick value appreciation comes on the back of business growth. The firm noted in that it grew 60 percent since its Series F. Or, in simpler terms, that it has “grown” 60 percent since February. What that means isn’t precisely clear, but the firm did note that it “grew 280 percent year-on-year” to an annualized gross merchandise volume (“GMV”) of $7.5 billion. It also expanded to 4,000 cities across the U.S. and Canada.

That means that it recorded a recent month, or quarter of total goods sold through its platform that, when annualized, works out to $7.5 billion. This helps us understand how large DoorDash is; its take is a percentage of that GMV total, for example. If you want bonus points, figure out Uber Eat’s take rate as a percent of its own GMV, and then work backwards into how large DoorDash might be today in net revenue terms.

As our Editor in Chief Alex Wilhelm reminds us, DoorDash’s fundraising past has been sprinkled with large rounds, and rapid valuation growth. In February, the company raised $400 million, and months before that, it raised $250 million.

Here’s a chart of the company’s known funding rounds.

For those who have been tracking the on-demand delivery startup system for a while, let’s do another rewind. GrubHub went public in 2014, Postmates has already filed. Uber, which owns Uber Eats, also recently went public.

In a world of Postmates, Uber Eats, Amazon-backed Deliveroo, and more, this strong infusion of cash into DoorDash, , shows that the private on-demand sector isn’t lukewarm amid a lot of competition. Some reports even said its .

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Shares of are in pre-market trading after the Chinese Internet giant reported better-than-expected growth for the quarter ending June 2018.

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Alibaba revenue of $12.23 billion, just ahead of street estimates. The firm’s 61 percent revenue growth in aggregate was matched by  61 percent revenue growth in its “core commerce” group and surpassed by 93 percent growth from its cloud computing group. Alibaba recorded $710 million in cloud computing top line in the period.

Tucked into the numbers, however, was a startling note regarding one of its recently-acquired components.

, Alibaba’s self-described “on-demand delivery service,”  is flush with new investment, some from outside the company. Alibaba notes in its earnings report that it “completed the acquisition of Ele.me” in May of this year, calling the service “one of the leading online food delivery platforms in China.”

Alibaba describes the “local services” work that Ele.me executes “core” to its business.

And that’s not idle chat. Alibaba goes on to detail that Ele.me has picked up $3 billion in new funding, including capital from its parent company:

We have established a company to hold Ele.me and Koubei as our combined flagship local services vehicle, which we plan to separately capitalize with investments from Alibaba, Ant Financial and third-party investors. As of the time of this announcement, we have received over US$3 billion in new investment commitments, including from Alibaba and SoftBank. As a result of this reorganization, subject to closing conditions, we will consolidate Koubei, which would result in a material one-off revaluation gain when the transaction closes.

So, Alibaba has created a new company that it will partially own, along with external investors. And, the new company has picked up $3 billion in �Ա����investments, including money from the ever-present .

That’s a lot of cash, and that’s an impressive investor list.

The global local-delivery market is huge. is . is . is in the space. and and and and and and and others are in the space, too.

Of course, Ele.me is pitted mostly against domestic competition like Meituan, but it’s working a crowded global market all the same. And it’s an expensive race, likely replete with heavy burn rates and slim margins. Happily, for Alibaba, it has now moved impending Ele.me losses to a separate company that it won’t have to report in its operating results.

These are wild times replete with unlimited money and zero fear. What a time to be alive.

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