Vancouver’s Foodee has acquired Chewse, a fellow office catering company that services the San Francisco Bay Area, Austin, and Chicago.
Founded in 2011, Chewse takes a “Spotify for food” approach to office catering and provides companies with curated selections of family-style meals from local restaurants. The San Francisco-based startup has raised US $33 to date.
Foodee will transition Chewse clients on family-style plans to individually packaged meals. The company is working closely with clients and their HR and administrative teams to deliver meal programs that meet the requirements of new workplace health and safety guidelines.
The acquisition comes alongside a $13 million strategic financing round that included a mix of equity led by BDC Capital paired with debt, provided by a major Canadian bank.
Through their bridge financing program, BDC Capital matched funds raised by the companies’ existing investors, including Kensington Capital via the BC Tech Fund and Structure Capital as well as new investor, Foundry Group.
According to reporting by BetaKit, Foundry Group is Chewse’s largest investor and their equity investment in Foodee helped supply some needed capital for its acquisition of Chewse.
“As clients all over North America discuss their return to work plans with us, they are quickly making the switch from platters of shared food to smartly packaged meals,” says Foodee CEO, Ryan Spong. “Modern offices in the Bay Area adapting to a hybrid work model have been exceptionally receptive to our meal planning platform and the switch to individually packaged meals.”
Foodee was founded in 2010 by Spong, Jon Cartwright, and Hootsuite co-founders Dario Meli and David Tedman.
Foodee raised a $10 million Series A round in 2017 and for the last 3 years has been recognized as one of the fastest growing technology companies in Deloitte’s Fast 50 program.