Selling One Dish Per Minute, Munchery Announces New Investors, Including Howard Behar, Former President and VP of Operations at Starbucks

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 09, 2013

Munchery, an online food marketplace for ordering delivery of quick and healthy meals from top local chefs, announced new investors as part of a previous Series A funding round as it crossed 200,000 meals delivered, selling more than one dish per minute every weekday. To accelerate its already rapid growth and further expand the amount of high­-quality food food available on its marketplace, Munchery – the fastest growing food delivery start-up – also unveiled an innovative Resident Chef program that sees it hiring an in-­house studio of top culinary talent to design and create gourmet prepared meals in addition to its independent Chef Partners.

The new investors participated in a $4 million Series A funding round earlier in the year that was led by e.ventures, with Tom Geiselman of e.ventures taking a board seat. Previously unannounced and joining e.ventures in the round was Menlo Ventures, Sherpa Ventures – Scott Stanford and Shervin Pishevar’s new venture capital firm – and Anthos Capital, a private equity firm managed by Bryan Kelley and backed by Howard Behar, the former President and longtime head of operations at Starbucks.

Munchery’s online food delivery service, that currently serves the entire San Francisco Bay Area, allows customers to order gourmet prepared meals that are handmade by the best local chefs using the finest fresh ingredients. Customers can order online, or via an iPhone app, for delivery to their home or office that same night.

"Munchery is one of the most exciting food startups I've seen in a long time," said Howard Behar, the former President of Starbucks. "They're making busy people's lives easier while building deep, everyday relationships with their customers by giving them reliable access to ridiculously convenient and remarkably high­ quality meals at home."

“Munchery is leading the fast growing online food delivery industry, and sits at the intersection of two major internet trends – the disruption of traditional, high­friction industries, and the explosion of online­to­offline ecommerce,” said Scott Stanford, cofounder at Sherpa Ventures. “They’re bringing technology to bear on the food industry and building a service that makes the quickest answer to ‘what’s for dinner?’ actually the better one for you. It flips everything you think you know about fast food or takeout on its head.”

Munchery features a new menu every day that is sent out to customers each morning via email. Each day’s menu features a fresh variety of dishes, and includes options for dietary restrictions such as vegetarian, organic and more. Customers can browse dishes, chef profiles, verified reviews and dietary tags, like wheat­-free and low carb, on the Munchery website and iPhone app, where they can also place orders for same-­day delivery to their home or office that night.

Started three years ago as an online marketplace for local independent chefs to sell their food direct to customers, today, Munchery is unveiling a new, innovative, Resident Chef program that will see it hiring and building out an in-­house studio of chef teams made up from top local culinary talent. The program will enable it to produce an even greater variety of food, and a lot more of it.

Munchery’s independent Chef Partners have been the cornerstone of its business, and many of them love the entrepreneurial independence and aren’t going anywhere. In addition to independent Chef Partners, Munchery is building a unique in­-house Resident Chef team that functions more like product teams at a tech start-up or film studio.

Munchery seeks to expand the pool of potential chefs by offering salaries at nearly 2x what the average executive chef makes while also providing stock options, full benefits, paid holidays off, and weekday working hours instead of nights and weekend schedules – all things unheard of in most the restaurant industry.

“We want to upend the culinary world by creating a completely new career path for talented chefs,” said Tri Tran, CEO and Co-founder of Munchery. “One that takes creative, experienced chefs out from behind the traditional kitchen walls and empowers them to fully leverage their skills, passion, creativity and love of all things food by giving them control to create delicious new dishes every day – all while building their own personal brands.”

Press and Partnership Contact: Michael Schaecher
Munchery Director of Marketing, michael(at)munchery(dot)com, 415­706­0325

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