December 8, 2017

Acre Venture Partners, the $125 million venture capital fund launched by Campbell Soup in February 2016, and Techstars Ventures co-led a $13 million Series A funding round for Pilotworks, an accelerator for food startups that includes a network of food incubators, mentors, and entrepreneurs.

Co-founded by Mike Dee and Nick Devane, and based in Brooklyn, New York, Pilotworks launched in 2016 and offers personalized mentoring, education, co-working space, kitchen logistics, technology, and other support mechanisms geared to help food startups gain scale.

“Food entrepreneurs need a lot more than a few desks and fast internet to start a business,” said Devane. “We give them kitchens that are up to code, equipped with everything they need whether its dry storage or blast chillers. And we help them market and distribute what they make.”

All Pilotworks kitchens offer equipment that can be rented by the hour or by the month, while its network of more than 75 mentors helps emerging entrepreneurs with everything from product development, social media management, fundraising, sourcing, branding, or accounting. The startup also considers itself an agtech startup, telling CNBC that it has also developed scheduling software and an online platform for its startups. 

“Every day we see upstart food companies becoming an increasingly important part of the food system,” said Lucas Mann of Acre Venture Partners. “Our investment in Pilotworks is about helping to unlock that potential and increase opportunity for entrepreneurs across the country. Their mission was clear from our first conversation, and we believe in their ability to accelerate outcomes for the future of food.”

Pilotworks plans to use the fresh capital to fund its geographical expansion, expand its team, and to enhance its marketing initiatives.

“We’re very excited to add so many great strategic partners and continue our work of empowering anyone to start a food business successfully. We will be adding new units: Newark just opened, and Chicago and Dallas are slated to open in December alongside our existing kitchens in Brooklyn, Portland, and Providence, as well as furthering our presence in New York City. We are also excited to continue expanding our services and offerings across the entire food stack,” said Pilotworks CEO and Co-Founder Nick Devane.

With the investment, Techstars Ventures and Acre Venture Partners join existing Pilotworks investors Arena Ventures, Riverpark (Andy Appelbaum, co-founder of Seamless), Ekistic Ventures (David Spielfogel, senior advisor to Rahm Emmanuel), Slow Ventures, SWTLF (Sweetgreen founders), Thrive Market founders, David Barber (Blue Hill), Scott Belksy (Behance founder), Marc Blazer (Overture Holdings), Shu Chowdry (Salido), Andy Peskoe, and Gin Lane.

“Pilotworks brilliantly provides everything an entrepreneurial food business needs – low overhead, shared access to capital intensive equipment, a collaborative work environment, cleaning, and warehousing services and technology,” stated Andy Appelbaum, co-founder of Seamless.

Through this investment Campbell Soup is also doubling down on its strategic plan to capitalize upon innovative startups in the food space. In February 2016 the CPG giant announced the launch of the $125 million Acre Venture Partners venture capital fund to finance food industry disruptors.

Since its formation, Acre Venture Partners has been an early investor in dynamic startups that are tied-in to solving some of the most forward facing challenges to the food industry.

In August 2016 the fund led a $20 million round for Farmers Business Network Inc. (FBN), the company behind the independent farmer-to-farmer network built to connect farmers and allow for the sharing of data, insights, and information critical to agronomic decision making. Little more than one year later, Acre Venture Partners was a participant in an impressive $110 million Series D for FBN, co-led by led by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. and Temasek, and including repeat investors GV, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and DBL Partners.

Launched in 2014 by agricultural entrepreneur and Chief Executive Amol Deshpande and Vice President Charles Baron, FBN’s technology involves collecting data streams from more than 115 million acre events of precision agronomic data, ranging from planting data, to pest information, to chemical applications to yields and harvest results.

FBN then analyzes the data to deliver a benchmark against which farmers can measure their own methods and results, or identify problems that need addressing.

“We created FBN to be growers’ advocate and to allow them to use information in fundamentally new ways, which helps them to be more profitable and thrive on their land,” Charles Baron, co-founder of FBN, told GAI News in a previous interview.

Acre Venture Partners has also committed capital to help solve the issues surrounding food waste, leading a $2.5 million seed round for Boston-based agtech startup Spoiler Alert in November 2016.

Founded in 2015, Spoiler Alert’s agtech technology platform acts as a facilitator for agribusinesses and food producers to find connections through which they can either donate or sell their unsold surplus food or organic matter.

Up to 40 percent of food produced, processed, and transported in the U.S ends up never being eaten, according to Feeding America, and more food finds its way to landfills and incinerators than any other type of municipal solid waste. This loss represents a fiduciary hit of $218 billion to U.S. farmers, businesses, and consumers each year, according to ReFED.

Acre Ventures sees this inefficiency as an opportunity for profit while also having a positive effect on the entire food value chain.

“This is a strong team with a big vision, and we couldn’t be more excited to leverage our industry experience and support them with their growth,” Sam Kass of Acre Venture Partners and the former White House Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition Policy, said upon the announcement of the investment.

-Lynda Kiernan