Zero-waste online grocer The Rounds raises $38M

Dive Brief:

The Rounds, a zero-waste online grocer, raised $38 million in a Series A round led by Annie Kadavy at Redpoint Ventures and Andrew Chen at Andreessen Horowitz, according to a company blog post last week.
The e-grocer delivers products in refillable packaging that customers then return to get cleaned and reused. For $10 per month, members get free weekly refills with no order minimums.
The funding comes at a time when The Rounds is scaling its geographic reach and growing its membership base, which totals more than 10,000 members, Alex Torrey, co-founder and CEO of The Rounds, wrote in the post.

Dive Insight:

The Rounds is positioning itself as a modern-day and sustainable version of the milkman but for household essentials and groceries.

“We’re called The Rounds because we make the rounds to you and your neighbors on the same day every week,” Torrey said in the post.

After launching initially in Philadelphia in 2019, The Rounds has since arrived in three more markets: Miami, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. The Rounds has a selection of more than 120 “sustainable, premium products” and sources locally in the areas it delivers, Torrey said.

Along with the funding news, Torrey noted that The Rounds has partnered with BrightDrop, a subsidiary of General Motors that specializes in electric vehicles and pickup containers for first- and last-mile deliveries. The tie-up will allow them to “explore and test different types of electric vehicles and delivery innovations,” Torrey said.

“We’ll also be doubling down on our technology, making our prediction engine even better so our Members don’t have to think twice about managing all the stuff they need in their homes,” Torrey said.

The Rounds has an autopilot system it calls the “psychic home manager” and allows customers to get products delivered at different cadences, like toothpaste every two months and seltzer water every two weeks.

Without disclosing The Rounds’ annual revenue, Torrey told TechCrunch that the business is profitable at the unit economics level on an individual delivery and that partnerships with apartment buildings helped the business quickly get density in new markets.

The Series A funding follows a $4 million seed round at the start of this year, bringing the business’s total new funding to $42 million. The Rounds aims to use its new funding to build out its technology team and expand its footprint in existing as well as new markets, including suburban areas, TechCrunch reported.