Food Expense Management Platform Sharebite Nets $39M for Expansion

Sharebrite, a food benefits platform, announced Tuesday (June 28) that it has closed a Series B round for $39 million, which it intends to use to add more products to “serve the evolving needs” of modern workplaces.

The press release noted that tighter labor force conditions have pushed more companies to consider augmenting employee benefits, with food being a big choice for driving employee well-being and fostering high-performing cultures.

The round was led by tech investor Prosus, its first investment in the U.S. FoodTech space. Sharebrite allows companies to centralize food ordering and expense management, making things simpler for employees who work in offices or remotely.

The company also matches transactions on a one-to-one basis, donating meals to food insecure families and working with nonprofits like City Harvest and Feeding America. Sharebrite makes use of enterprise-focused tech, which lets companies deliver food for employees and manage expense allocation.

“Since day one, our technology was purpose-built for companies as an enabling mechanism for maximum employee engagement,” said Dilip Rao, CEO and co-founder of Sharebite. “Our Series B funding round enables us to further accelerate our market share within the highly profitable corporate segment.

“With the backing of world-class partners like Prosus, along with Fiserv, Contour Ventures, Reign Ventures and others, we will launch new products and optimize our offering to help companies create a better place to work for employees, with food benefits.”

Efforts to work with digital food and delivery options have been going on for some time, with grocers looking at ways to keep their eCommerce successes from the quarantine days of 2020 going, PYMNTS wrote.

Read more: Grocers Expand Direct Delivery to Cut Out Last-Mile Middlemen

This has seen some companies exploring the development of their own fulfillment networks, in order to stop relying on options like Instacart.

In one such example, Kroger has been opening what it calls automation-powered customer fulfillment centers, which will be working with Ocado Group from the U.K. This is part of the “hub-and-spoke” model, letting bigger distribution centers, or hubs, send things to smaller facilities, called spokes.