Full Harvest Technologies, which facilitates the sale of cosmetically flawed or surplus fresh produce, has closed an $8.5 million funding round.
The San Francisco-based company has already helped large farms sell nearly 7 million pounds of produce, according to a news release. The investment will allow Full Harvest to expand its U.S. footprint and significantly increase the size of its sales, operations and technology teams.
Spark Capital was the lead investor for the Series A funding round.
“An astounding amount of produce is wasted today in the U.S., but the intuitive and beautifully designed Full Harvest online marketplace is starting to change this dynamic and is already delivering dramatic business benefits for its customers,” Spark Capital investor John Melas-Kyriazi said in the release. “By aggregating excess produce supply at scale and providing a superior user experience to growers and food buyers via software, Full Harvest is shifting the way the industry thinks about how produce is bought and sold.”
The company has increased profit per acre for farms, reduce procurement time for consumer packaged goods buyers and helped those companies save money, per the release.
“Full Harvest delivers measurable benefits to all stakeholders,” Dan Phillips of Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, another investor, said in the release. “Farms gain access to a new profit center and buyers achieve convenience and cost savings, all while meeting growing consumer demand for sustainably sourced food products.”