Here Foods raises seven million euros

The start-up offers a solution that digitally connects grocers and suppliers.

Berlin-based start-up Hier Foods has landed investment of seven million euros in an early-stage round. The company aims to digitize local food commerce between suppliers and retailers.

The round is led by the US-based Collaborative Fund. Existing investors, air conditioning venture capitalist Pale Blue Dot from Sweden and SaaS and infrastructure-focused early-stage fund Speedinvest, are also in the mix. New entrants are Berlin-based logistics chain-focused Amplifier Labs and San Francisco-based fund A* Capital. Also joining are business angels like Choco founder Daniel Khachab, Github founder Scott Chacon, Flickr founder Caterina Fake and investors Auxxo and investor Entrepreneur First.

"The more we learned about local grocery, the more we realized how incredibly inefficient the relationship between retailers and suppliers still is," says Lara Hämmerle, co-founder and CEO of Hier Foods. "The consequence of this is that we see far fewer great, local products in digital as well as brick-and-mortar retail than we could." Guy Vidra, a partner at the Collaborative Fund who will join the company's board, says: "Today's food supply chain is deeply inefficient, highly complex and a major cause of food waste (...)." Here Foods could change that, he says.

The company wants to create a decentralized alternative to the global food value chain. To do so, it wants to digitize procurement processes between local suppliers and digital and brick-and-mortar retailers. This should simplify the local supply chain in a sustainable and decentralized way. Lara Hämmerle and Mark Jäger founded Hier Foods in 2020.