Startup Good Eggs Raises $100 Million for Expansion to L.A.

(Bloomberg) -- Good Eggs Inc., a San Francisco-based startup that delivers groceries in the Bay Area, is plotting an expansion to Los Angeles following a $100 million funding round.

The funding was co-led by Glade Brook Capital Partners, a new investor in the company. JP Van Arsdale, a Glade Brook managing partner, will join Good Eggs' board of directors.

The cash infusion will be used to expand the company's reach to southern California, which Good Eggs says will triple its market. Good Eggs will also invest to improve the customer experience. The company more than doubled its customers last year and now has annual revenue that's higher than $100 million. It opened a new warehouse that quadrupled its capacity just as the pandemic hit and hired more than 400 employees in the last year.

The company is also hiring Vineet Mehra, formerly an executive with Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., as its chief growth and customer experience officer.

Good Eggs joins a long list of grocery-delivery companies seeing a pandemic boost. Investors are flocking to the category: Instacart Inc., for example, is reported to be mulling an initial public offering, while Imperfect Foods Inc. just announced its own funding round.

Good Eggs' model is to use locally produced goods for its service in fewer areas. It says 70% of its offerings are locally sourced.

“We're really focused on having deep roots in a few geographies,” said Chief Executive Officer Bentley Hall. He said the company's goal “is not to spread ourselves thin.”

Good Eggs would be profitable without the planned expansion, but has instead opted to invest in reaching southern California and improving its technology, Hall said.

Founded in 2011, Good Eggs has already expanded -- and subsequently withdrawn -- from Los Angeles, New Orleans and Brooklyn. Hall said those experiences were instructional in the current expansion and pointed to strong regional grocers like Wegmans on the East Coast and HEB in Texas.

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