Nestlé Acquires Freshly For $1.5 Billion

Words by Romana Hai

Nestlé Acquires Freshly For $1.5 Billion
Nestlé Acquires Freshly For $1.5 Billion

Nestlé USA has officially acquired one of the leading fresh-prepared meal delivery services in the U.S., Freshly, for $1.5 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Nestlé is offering Freshly $950 million, with potential earnouts of up to $550 million based on future performance.

Freshly, the New York City-based startup was founded in 2015 and it has built its business around helping consumers buy healthy meals that are delivered to their doorsteps on a weekly basis. The company has looked to differentiate its offering from other meal kit services with its easy-to-cook meal kits that can be prepared in a matter of minutes using a microwave or oven.

“Consumers are embracing eCommerce and eating at home like never before. It’s an evolution brought on by the pandemic but taking hold for the long term. Freshly is an innovative, fast-growing, food-tech startup, and adding them to the portfolio accelerates our ability to capitalize on the new realities in the U.S. food market and further positions Nestlé to win in the future.”

Nestlé USA Chairman and CEO, Steve Presley.

Nestlé’s move to acquire Freshly will enable the food and beverage brand to understand better how consumers eat at home. Freshly utilizes a highly specialized consumer analytics platform, which can help Nestlé gain deeper insights into consumers’ evolving eating and consumption habits.

“At Nestlé we know the at-home food market and we know how to win there. With the acquisition of Freshly we are strengthening our position in the U.S. and expanding our ability to deliver a wide variety of delicious food to our consumers when and where they want,” said Laurent Freixe, Nestlé CEO Zone Americas.

In 2017, Nestlé purchased a roughly 16 percent stake in the startup as a way to evaluate and test the new category. Since then, Freshly has spearheaded the direct-to-consumer (DTC) prepared meal delivery category for Nestlé, which is today the world’s largest food and beverage platform.

Since launching, Freshly has shown year-over-year growth and is now shipping more than one million meals per week to customers across 48 states. For the year 2020, the company’s forecasted sales are projected to reach $430 million.

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