Conquering The Grocery Aisle: 11 Early-Stage US Food And Beverage Startups To Watch

The consumer goods category has heated up recently with venture capital taking a more visible role, and overall global funding to private CPG companies reaching a new high in 2015.

A wide majority of the deals over the last five years in the consumer packed goods sector — nearly 81%, in fact — went to companies manufacturing and distributing food and beverages (as opposed to personal care, cleaning supplies, pet care, among other CPG categories).

With this in mind, we used the CB Insights database to zero in on the food and beverage category in the US, and identify 11 early-stage companies to watch in this sector, based on startups that had their headquarters in the US and raised either seed/angel or Series A funds in Q1’16.

New York-based early-stage accelerator, AccelFoods, seed-funded 6 of the companies on the list, including organic tea manufacturer Tea Drops, boxed-coffee maker Wandering Bear, and cereal manufacturer Native State Foods.

All of the startups have backing from incubator/accelerators or venture firms. Sparkling water and fresh juice producer Spindrift Beverage Co. raised a $7.2M Series A round in January, backed by Prolog Ventures. The company’s seed round in 2014 was backed by VCs including New Ground Ventures, RiverPark Ventures, and Warbros Venture Partners.

Hungryroot, Simple Mills, Brew Publik, and Bandar foods are the other VC-backed companies on the list.

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