Dive Brief:

• Fridge No More, a grocery-delivery startup based in Brooklyn, New York, has closed a $15.4 million Series A funding round, the company announced in a press release Tuesday. The round was led by Insight Partners, a venture capital firm that has also invested in HelloFresh and Imperfect Foods. Other participants included Altair Capital, an existing Fridge No More investor.
• The delivery company plans to use the funds to expand its operations in New York City and in other areas along the East Coast, build its engineering and operations staffs and scale its dark store network.
• ​Fridge No More notched its multimillion-dollar investment round less than six months after beginning operations using bicycles in a single Brooklyn neighborhood.

Dive Insight:

Fridge No More, which currently provides 15-minute grocery-delivery service to online customers in four New York communities, including Williamsburg, Park Slope and Gowanus, is looking to distinguish itself by delivering groceries to customers within one mile of each location in its "cloud stores" network in 15 minutes. The company says it does not charge delivery fees and has no minimum order requirement, and also promises to avoid “costly or unexpected replacements.”

Fridge No More plans to open 40 cloud stores across New York City area, Insider reported. The company manages inventory and orders using a proprietary data platform that it says is optimized based on store-specific customer demand.

The emphasis on speed could help Fridge No More compete with grocery-delivery services provided by supermarket chains either on their own or in partnership with e-commerce providers like Instacart and Shipt, which measure their delivery time in hours. In New York, Fridge No More also faces competition from online grocer FreshDirect, which is majority controlled by Ahold Delhaize.

Fridge No More is stepping up its presence in the grocery-delivery space as a host of other startups are also developing technology and services aimed at changing how shoppers purchase food. Earlier this month, Albertsons began testing remote-controlled delivery carts supplied by California startup Tortoise at two supermarkets in the state. Meanwhile, Foxtrot Market, a chain of upscale convenience stores in Chicago, Dallas and Washington, D.C, that provides one-hour local delivery, raised $42 million in a Series B round that closed in February.

In Europe, 15-minute grocery delivery firms have quickly scaled up and attracted funding on the back of the global pandemic. Cajoo, which operates in France, has raised more than $7 million, while London-based startup Weezy recently announced $20 million in new funding. Gorillas, a Berlin-based company that touts an average delivery time of ten minutes, announced a $44 million funding round in December.