UK – Allplants, a direct-to-consumer plant-based meals firm, has secured a £38m (US$52.41m) Series B funding round led by Draper Esprit to fuel its expansion and recruitment plans.
Founded in 2016, Allplants makes hand-made plant-based meals in the company’s own kitchen – Europe’s biggest plant-based kitchen running on 100% renewable energy – and delivers them across the entirety of Great Britain.
According to Food Manufacture, the company’s recent funding round is the biggest ever Series B funding raised by a plant-based food company in Europe.
The London-based company says it will use the latest investment to increase its plant-based kitchen in Walthamstow, North London, to six times its current size.
This, it says, will put it in a better position to meet demand from the direct-to-consumer UK market which continues to grow as veganism and concerns about the environment push consumers away from animal protein.
Since 2017, more than 3.5m Allplants meals have been eaten, according to the company. The business has doubled revenue every year since launch.
“In the five years that we have been cooking, we’ve seen the demand for plant-based food explode. We’ve got a tonne of exciting plans to bring the movement to even more people’s kitchens, and this investment will allow us to do just that,” Jonathan Petrides, founder and chief executive of Allplants, said.
“We can now imagine, create and serve up many more delicious recipes and products, to ultimately accelerate the transformative impact that plant-based living will have on the future of our planet.”
The firm also plans to use part of the fund to recruit more employees, from additional culinary-school-trained chefs through to operations, innovation, marketing, and technology.
It will also build scalable capacity for rapid distribution into other channels, as well as fuel future innovations and developing a broader range of product categories.
“Allplants is uniquely positioned at the intersection of some of the fastest growing areas in food consumption today – high quality, plant-based meals that deliver on taste, sustainability and nutrition in an incredibly convenient way for consumers,” said Draper Esprit partner Nicola McClafferty.
“Allplants has real potential to scale its direct-to-consumer business while expanding into new channels both in the UK and beyond. We believe it can be a global brand, bringing nutrition, taste and convenience to the plantcurious consumer and we are delighted to be supporting the team as they grow and thrive.”
Other new investors in the round include purpose driven CPG fund The Craftory, Silicon Valley-based TriplePoint Capital, international England footballers Chris Smalling and Kieran Gibbs and Cassandra Stavrou MBE, who founded the UK’s leading independent snack company PROPER Snacks.
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