Food Tech Peach Raises $8M as First Course, Plans Entrée in Boston

Peach photos used with permission

After expanding to San Diego in May, Seattle-based Peach says it has raised $8 million in venture funding to bring its lunch ordering technology to Boston this October, and to Washington D.C. by early next year.

In a statement today, Peach says Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group led the current Series A financing round, which was joined by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital. Madrona, Vulcan, and Maveron all contributed to the $2.7 million in seed funding that Peach raised in mid-2014.

Three ex-Amazon software developers, Nishant Singh, Chenyu Wang, and Denis Bellavance, founded Peach in early 2014 to develop Web-based technology that provides order processing and food logistics services to restaurants under a revenue-sharing agreement. The company’s analytic software helps predict each restaurant’s order volume a week in advance and optimize delivery routes. It can even help drivers find the best parking spots for each delivery run.

The move to Boston marks Peach’s third expansion. The startup faces a market crowded with such rivals as GrubHub, Foodler, Favor, Caviar, and Chef Nightly, a Blade portfolio company that began offering its AI-based meal ordering service in Boston earlier this year.

“We look for high-density workplaces and interesting food options—most cities have that, definitely Boston and DC,” Peach co-founder and CEO Singh wrote in an e-mail.

In the statement released today, Madrona managing director Scott Jacobson says, “Nishant and his team have built a two-sided marketplace that works incredibly well for both restaurants and eaters. While there is no shortage of companies in this category, Peach is the first to design a service that delights both constituencies equally.”

Peach has sought to differentiate its takeout ordering service by focusing on the lunchtime takeout business among major employers, and making the process as simple as possible by using an SMS/text-based ordering system. Peach sends a daily text to registered members that offers a lunch dish of the day and just two alternative options—“lite” and vegetarian. Members simply reply “yes” to place their orders, which are delivered during the lunch hour.

Peach partners with restaurants that provide workplace lunch deliveries, and recently added technology that helps restaurants provide catering services. The company says it has delivered more than 400,000 meals since it began operating in Seattle in June, 2014.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.