How Daily Harvest Earned $250 Million in Revenue in Just 5 Years of Business
By pbump@hubspot.com (Pamela Bump)
In just 5 years, Daily Harvest, which provides healthy, easy-to-prep meals to customers based on algorithmic flavor preferences, disrupted the food industry and earned more than $250 million in revenue.
And, even before the acceleration in home food deliveries in 2020, the health and sustainability-conscious brand had already raked in $43 million in funding from investors who aligned with the company’s vision.
In a recent episode of HubSpot’s podcast, The Shake Up, our hosts Alexis Gay and Brianne Kimmel spoke with Daily Harvest founder and CEO Rachel Drori to learn what inspired her to build the brand, how she navigated investor pitching, how algorithms fuel the business, and how she thinks about the brand’s marketing mix.
Below are just a few highlights from the podcast:
Daily Harvest on Growing Its Brand and Customer Base
Daily Harvest’s Mission to Serve Healthy Food
[00:21:26] Rachel Drori: We’re not a meal kit. We’re more like a [00:21:30] modern CPG than a meal kit. Our food doesn’t rotate. You don’t have to really cook it. It’s already prepped.
[00:21:42] Alexis Gay: Would you say you’re defining a new category?
[00:21:45] Drori: Absolutely. I got into it because I’m absolutely a foodie. …. I wanted food that was convenient because that’s what makes fruits and vegetables hard. … But I also wanted food that was jam-packed with all the stuff that I know is good for me. … Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine,” right? We’ve ended up with a Hippocratic oath for medicine being a medicine. Whereas food is kind of lost its way. So we’re really here to change that.
… The way that Big Food is set up is very systemically broken. … Investors in big food companies, the big CPGs of the world, are really focused on things like margin, accretion, and slow, steady returns dividends. … When you think about how that translates to food … it’s pretty ugly. And the way that they’re structurally set up is not to innovate. A case in point is Kraft in recent years, right? Their big innovation last year was launching pink macaroni and cheese. … They’ve just completely lost touch with the customer and they don’t have the structural agility to be able to move with modern times.
What drives demand for Daily Harvest?
[00:23:57] Gay: What drives the demand for your product? … Is it that younger generations are focusing on healthier food options? Is that the traditional family dinner is not as much part of our culture, is it because of the struggles of the restaurant industry? What do you think?
[00:24:15] Drori: I think there’s a few things. We’re kind of at the crossroads of a bunch of — I hate using this term — megatrends, right? … I …read more
Source:: HubSpot Blog
