Sprig Raises $45 Million For On-Demand Food Delivery

Employees of Sprig are undoubtedly raising their Bianca chicken melts in celebration today, as the healthy-food centric delivery app has announced a new $45 million funding round to TechCrunch. Based in San Francisco, Sprig has quickly become one of the biggest players in the quest for the "Uber of food," serving a trio of healthy meals at lunch and dinner that are delivered to diners' doors in 20 minutes or less for a mere $9-12 each, plus a $3-5 delivery fee. It's an increasingly competitive market, with competitor Spoonrocket having raised $10 million last year, and Square-owned Caviar entering the ring last week with their own zippy limited-option delivery service, Fastbite. And that's to say nothing of the numerous competitors working on restaurant food delivery, including Grubhub/Seamless, Caviar, Postmates, and Doordash.

Sprig, which currently serves SF and Palo Alto, plans to use the infusion of cash to expand their reach to the entire Bay Area by 2015's end, as well as to Chicago. That likely means more of their mega-popular collaborations with top chefs like Stuart Brioza, Matthew Accarrino, and Tim Archuleta, which have garnered sellout status. Reviews have been mixed: in a taste-test of Sprig last year, the Chronicle's Jonathan Kauffman wrote that the fare "resembled an airplane snack," but the SF Weekly's Anna Roth dug her Sprig meals: "[It was] food a little better than I could make myself, in a fraction of the time (and probably close to the cost)." Nonetheless, Sprig already has quite a few frequent flyers: it offers an Amazon Prime-like unlimited-delivery plan, Sprig Go, for $10/month.