Farmdrop, a farmer-friendly online grocery platform based in the U.K., has raised £7 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is Atomico, the London VC fund founded by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström.
Originally launched in 2014 as a ‘click and collect’ service that let you order groceries online direct from farmer-producers and pick up your order at a local collection point, the company has since pivoted to door-to-door delivery but with the same basic idea of a marketplace that bypasses the mass supermarkets.
“The fundamental problem is that the supermarket’s dominance over the last fifty years has put huge amounts of downward pressure on farmgate prices,” explains Farmdrop co-founder Ben Pugh. “In this environment, the only option for producers has been to focus on yields and durability which has led to a big depreciation in the taste and nutritional quality of homegrown foods”.
To counteract this, the Farmdrop platform claims to remove (or replace) wholesalers and retailers from the supply…