October 5, 2016

Britain-based food delivery giant, Just Eat, has announced the launch of its first Food Tech Accelerator program.

The 10-week program, which will begin in November, will be accepting five early-stage food tech startups that will receive a £20,000 (US$25,483) investment, mentorship, and business guidance from in-house experts with Just Eat in exchange for a five percent equity stake in their business. Upon completion of the program, Just Eat plans to invite venture capitalists and angel investors to a pitching event for its class.

“Now the market leader in online food delivery, operating in 13 countries across the globe, we know what it takes to get a successful food tech business up and running and to bring it to scale,” said Fernando Fanton, chief product & technology officer with Just Eat.

The company will be looking to engage with startups involved in a wide range of technologies from food waste mitigation to insect-based protein technologies.

“Food tech is very broad and what we’re looking for with this accelerator is diversity,” Stuart Mainwaring, head of Just Eat’s Corporate Ventures team, told The Memo.

Along with the announcement of the accelerator launch, Just Eat has also announced the formation of its new Corporate Ventures team, which will be tasked with exploring opportunities for investment and partnership with startups within the food tech space.

“We’ve already worked with many start-ups over the years but this is a new demonstration of our commitment to supporting others in our industry and building a sustainable future for the food tech industry,” says Fanton.

A Summer of Acceleration

Investment in the food tech sector last year reached $6.8 billion with investments in European-based food tech startups reaching $1 billion alone, according to a report by Rosenheim Advisors. Meanwhile, the VC investments in food tech saw an annual growth rate of 152 percent in 2014, according to CB Insights. With this increasing momentum has come a flurry of food and food tech accelerator launches this summer.

Global giant, Cisco teamed up with H-FARM to announce the launch of its own Italy-based food and agtech accelerator at the end of May. Similar to Just Eat’s program, the four-month long Cisco/H-FARM program will select five recipient early stage startups, particularly from the fields of precision agriculture, logistics, food quality assurance and traceability, organic foods, and sustainability to receive an investment of €20,000 (US$22,399), mentorship, guidance, room and board, and access to industry insiders that can help steer the development of each concept.

Global startup accelerator, Startupbootcamp, also announced the launch of Startupbootcamp FoodTech – a Rome-based three month long accelerator program designed to bring ten food tech companies to scale. Startupbootcamp FootTech will select ten startups which will receive €15,000 (US$16,790) in seed funding, office space, and access to a network of advisors, investors and venture capital firms.

“The food sector provides great opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs as it is still widely open to “disruptive” innovation,” said Luigi Capello, CEO of LVenture Group, one of the backers of the program.

More recently, in August of this year, Valmiki 504, a New Orleans-based venture capital division of New York-based Valmiki Capital Management announced the launch of Ceres 504, a new business incubator for food and food tech startups in New Orleans and across Louisiana.

Indeed, earlier this year, Joe Sebastiani, former managing partner of Wines.com, former president of Viansa Winery and founder of KRAVE Jerky, announced the launch of Sonoma Brands, an incubator dedicated to the development of new food brands and the disruption of the packaged consumer foods space.

As evidenced by the launch of these Italy and New Orleans-based programs, region-specific food incubators are becoming more prevalent in the investment space.

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Lynda Kiernan