Last week, Sun Basket, a San Francisco-based healthy meal delivery subscription service, announced that it raised $30 million in Series E funding, led by PivotNorth Capital. Other investors include Sapphire Ventures, August Capital, Founders Circle, Unilever Ventures, Baseline Ventures, Relevance Capital, Accolade Partners, and Correlation Ventures. This brings the companys total funding raised to date to $125 million.

We’re thrilled to have the strong support of our investors who share our vision for building the leading personalized healthy eating platform, said Adam Zbar, Sun Basket CEO. Food is a $1T market ripe for online disruption, and Sun Basket will continue to innovate, focusing on our customers’ top three needs: health, ease, and personalization.

Sun Basket said it will use the company to further evolve into an omni-channel healthy eating platform. This means expanding their healthy meal options to include breakfast, lunch and dinner which can be personalized to fit their customers lifestyles. Other changes include adding a personalized, artificial intelligence-powered digital user experience and developing strategic partnerships to increase customer acquisition and brand awareness. The company also said it will use automation where possible to increase profit margins and focus on products and services that drive the highest value revenue.

Tim Connors, founder of PivotNorth Capital, commented on the companys continued investments into Sun Basket.

Adam has built a platform which personalizes and curates meals to optimize a healthy lifestyle for people with a wide variety of dietary preferences, said Connors. With the incredibly large and influential millennial population increasingly prioritizing healthy meals and snacks, we believe they have the ability to build a category-defining company that has huge growth potential and is profitable.

Sun Basket was founded in 2014 by Zbar and chef Justine Kelly to offer healthy meals. They currently offer dinners, snacks and add-ons such as salads, sauces and soups and broths. They offer a variety of meal plans for two to four people that are priced at $10.99 to $11.99 per person per serving. They have a wide range of meal plans, developed by Kelly, to suit a range of food preferences and special dietary needs:

• Carb-conscious
• Paleo
• Mediterranean
• Lean & Clean
• Gluten-free (note: meals are prepared in a facility that handles wheat so the gluten-free meal plan is not recommended for people with severe gluten intolerance)
• Vegan
• Quick & Easy
• Vegetarian
• Diabetes-friendly
• Pescatarian
• Chefs choice

Subscribers can choose one specific meal plan or mix and match to choose the menus they want. The menus feature seasonal foods with a focus on healthy. They use certified organic product, antibiotic- and hormone-free meat, organic eggs and wild-caught seafood. In addition, Sun Basket uses recyclable and compostable packaging and they support Feeding America and local food banks.

Are you hungry yet? The menu for June 2 looks pretty tasty: pork with cherry compote, charred escarole and pecan-apple relish; chick and new potato lettuce cups with tarragon-mustard dressing, and turkey taco bowls with brown rice, black beans and pico de gallo (pictured at right). Yum!

Insider Take:

With competitors like Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Green Fresh and Veestro, is there room for Sun Basket to grow? According to Review Chatter, the 12-year-old meal kit industry has grown to an industry estimated between $3 billion and $5 billion. In 2018, 14.3 million households purchased meal kits in the last half of the year, a big increase from 2017s figure of 3.8 million households. Also last year, online-only purchasers of meal kits represented 60% of total sales.

Sun Basket offers a wide variety of meal options – similar to other plans – but their competitive advantages are their values (certified organic, antibiotic- and hormone-free, wild-caught fish and seafood and sustainable packaging), new offerings to include breakfast, lunch and dinner, and a seamless, AI-powered user experience. If Sun Basket continues to do what it is doing well, and it adds features and products and services that others arent offering yet, they will be spending their time and money wisely.