Melbourne-based grocery delivery startup YourGrocer has just closed out a $500,000 seed funding round, led by Bevan Clark, Guy King and other private investors.
YourGrocer is an online service that allows people to order products from their local butcher, greengrocer, bakers, delis or independent supermarket, offering independent retailers and their customers a “full-stack e-commerce” and same-day delivery.
According to founder Morgan Ranieri, while a lot of customers prefer to shop locally, many end up buying their groceries at Coles and Woolworths out of convenience. YourGrocer allows local retailers to make deliveries at a time convenient to their customers, making their value proposition much stronger than that of the major supermarkets.
YourGrocer initially covered a number of suburbs in Melbourne’s north, including Brunswick, Coburg, Northcote, Collingwood, Carlton, Fitzroy and North Melbourne. Since then, it has added a second run covering inner-eastern suburbs such as Richmond and Balwyn.
Ranieri told StartupSmart, further development and hiring a team that will allow it to scale will be key focuses in the short term.
“At this stage, we’ve built a product our customers love, and now we’re focusing on customer acquisition and growing. Our next step is hiring the right people to increase our UX and development capabilities, and expanding into new suburbs,” Ranieri says.
“We now have 17 retailers, two vans, and several hundred customers… Right now our sales up around the $50,000 per month mark – which is quite a milestone – and means local shops are selling $50,000 more groceries per month,” Ranieri says.
“We’re laser-focused on our business model. We’ll test other things but this funding round will help us build a team to rapidly scale.
“We want to launch a few more runs and build them up to capacity and profitability in a short period of time, and that’s when we’ll expand interstate. So we want to cover all of Melbourne as soon as possible – by mid to late next year.”
Clark, who built discount shopping website RetailMeNot.com with King before selling it for $77 million and is also an angel investor in LIFX, personally endorses the service.
“YourGrocer is a service that my family use and love. The large supermarket chains can’t offer the same level of personal service and quality that you get from your local stores, and now as consumers increasingly buy groceries online, the local stores can compete there too,” Clark says.
“Morgan and his team have an innovative and scalable approach that I believe could have a huge following in Australia, and internationally.”
YourGrocer is one of the supporting sponsors of Startup Victoria’s aboveallhuman conference, with Ranieri crediting the startup’s rapid growth to the strength of the Melbourne startup community.
“Startup Victoria has been a huge support. The whole Lean Startup and Startup Victoria community has been awesome to meet people and get support, and we’re really excited about the aboveallhuman Conference,” he says.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
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