London, 18 October 2021: Draper Esprit, a leading venture capital firm investing in and developing high growth technology businesses, today announces that it has led a £38m Series B funding round in allplants, the D2C plant-based food business. The raise Is the largest ever Series B round for a European plant-based food business and follows allplants' record-breaking crowdfund and Series A.
Founded in 2016 by Jonathan Petrides and his brother Alex, allplants serves the rapidly growing ‘plant-curious’, or flexitarian, consumer market already worth an annual £100 billion in developed markets and £10 billion in the UK alone. Its plant-based meals are hand-made 24 hours a day by 140 chefs in the company’s own kitchen – Europe’s biggest plant-based kitchen running on 100% renewable energy – and delivered across Great Britain. The model combines convenience and a way for environmentally aware customers to reduce their impact on the world through small adjustments to their eating habits. Revenues have more than doubled every year since its inception.
allplants will use this investment round to increase the size of its plant-based kitchen in Walthamstow, North London, sixfold and expand its selection of meals, enabling it to service a rapidly expanding direct-to-consumer UK market. It will also build scalable capacity for rapid distribution into other channels and significantly expand its team to bring in talent across the entire stack of the business.
New investors in the round include consumer-specialised fund The Craftory, venture finance experts TriplePoint Capital, plus international England footballers Chris Smalling and Kieran Gibbs, musician Zak Abel, and Cassandra Stavrou MBE, who founded the UK’s leading independent snack company PROPER Snacks. Existing investors Felix Capital, the venture fund behind Oatly, Deliveroo and Peloton, and Octopus Ventures, early backers of Cazoo, Zoopla and Depop, also participated.
Jonathan Petrides, founder and CEO of allplants, said:
"In the five years that we have been cooking, we’ve seen the demand for plant-based food explode. We’ve got a ton of exciting plans to bring the movement to even more people’s kitchens, and this investment will allow us to do just that.
“Food choices are deeply personal, so quality and taste will always come first for us – it’s the driver of everything we do, and what makes it so easy for our customers to include more plants in their diets without the compromise. We can now imagine, create and serve up many more delicious recipes and products, to ultimately accelerate the transformative impact that plant-based living will have on the future of our planet.”
Nicola McClafferty, partner, Draper Esprit, said:
“This is an extremely exciting investment for Draper Esprit. allplants is uniquely positioned at the intersection of some of the fastest growing areas in food consumption today: high quality, plant-based meals that deliver on taste, sustainability and nutrition in an incredibly convenient way for consumers.
“JP and the team have established a stellar brand with very clear values, incredibly strong growth and a loyal customer base. allplants has real potential to scale its direct-to-consumer business while expanding into new channels both in the UK and beyond. We believe it can be a global brand, bringing nutrition, taste and convenience to the plant-curious consumer and we are delighted to be supporting the team as they grow and thrive.”