With an advisory board of members from Imperfect Foods and Hollar, plus backing from Upfront Ventures, Martie – a new online discount grocery store – founded by Swedish entrepreneur Louise Fritjofsson and Kari Morris launches in California.
As the only female-founded online grocery store, Martie’s $3M seed funding makes up just 0.03% of the $10B that has been poured into the male-dominated industry in 2021 alone, even though grocery shoppers are overwhelmingly female. According to Pew Research, 80% of mothers are the primary home cook and grocery shopper. Martie looks forward to representing the female voice and making sure the digital shelves are stocked with the foods and prices that shoppers really need.
Martie is committed to make foods more accessible through pricing and distribution in a time where food prices have increased by 4.6% in the past 12 months, and more than 13m American families are food insecure, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Compelled by the urgency of our collective food waste issue and the opportunity therein, female serial food and tech entrepreneurs, Louise Fritjofsson and Kari Morris, teamed up to provide a solution to the market. In the last 10 months, the founder-duo built Martie remotely, in which time both had a baby, secured a $3M in funding from Upfront Ventures, and signed on an advisory board of seasoned executives including former CEO of Imperfect Foods, Philip Behn.
“We are solving a problem we ran into as founders ourselves. After collectively launching more than 5 food brands, the disconnect between the value of surplus inventory–stemming from package changes, seasonal products and change in orders–and available outlets, causes 30-40% of all foods produced to go to landfill” says co-founder, Louise Fritjofsson.
“This is a staggering 108 billion pounds of food that can be saved, and it’s a problem so deeply integrated into the full food production cycle that it will not be solved in itself” continues co-founder, Kari Morris.
“Martie is tackling two of the biggest challenges we as a society face today, as food waste is a sizable contributor to our global climate crisis as well as many American families are struggling to make ends meet,” says Kobie Fuller of Upfront Ventures. “We are excited by Martie’s winning combination of incomparable savings, ease of shopping, convenience of home delivery and positive impact on the planet. Martie will quickly become a household name and make a real difference in people’s lives”.
