Home Chef:
Deal: $40 Million Series B
Investors: The round was led by L Catterton, the private equity firm that formed earlier this year as the result of a merger between Catterton, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based PE firm, and the private equity arm of LVMH, the largest luxury conglomerate in the world. LVMH's subsidiaries include Dom Perignon, Hennessey, Dior, Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, and TAG Heuer.
The four-year-old startup has raised $52M to date and earlier backers include Shining Capital and Guild Capital.
What they do: Chicago-based Home Chef delivers fresh ingredients and instructions needed to cook restaurant-quality meals at home. What differentiates Home Chef from other recipe delivery startups, such as Plated and Blue Apron, is its variety and flexibility, allowing users to choose from 13 new meal options every week and update their account daily. Home Chef delivers everything a user needs to cook a home-made meal from scratch in just 30 minutes.
According to the company, Home Chef is now delivering more than 1.5 million meals per month to over 97 percent of the country.
Other details: This latest round follows Home Chef’s $10M Series A from May.
In September, the company announced that it would be creating more than 1,200 jobs and investing over $3M in a new facility outside of Atlanta by 2020. The new facility, according to the Chicago Tribune, will serve as a wholesale purchasing, assembling, packaging and distribution center.
In response to today's funding, CEO and Founder Pat Vihtelic said in a release, "At Home Chef we strive to provide great meals, the most variety, and superior flexibility at an affordable price to accommodate our customers' busy lives. As a result, we are experiencing tremendous growth and this round of investment will enable us to achieve our growth goals."
Added Michael Farello, Managing Partner of L Catterton Growth Fund in a statement, "We are impressed by Home Chef's rapid expansion and growth, demonstrating their ability to capture an increasing share of this exciting category. Home Chef's ability to provide consumers a wide variety of home-cooked favorites—at prices that are often lower than the cost of separately purchased ingredients—is a clear recipe for success."
Home Chef is headquartered in Chicago and has additional distribution centers in Los Angeles and, soon, in Atlanta.
(Image via HomeChef.com).
