20 Exploding Food and Beverage Startups (2023)
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They might not grab headlines like SaaS startups, consumer tech companies, or e-commerce juggernauts.
But food and beverage startups are every bit as creative and exciting.
By leveraging technology, these startups have created new markets in everything from gourmet delicacies to time-saving food delivery services.
Discover some of the hottest startups in the food and beverage space below.
1. Frizata
5-year search growth: 4400%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2019
Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil
Funding: $9.5M (Undisclosed)
What they do: Frizata is a plant-based meal delivery service that offers chef-crafted, nutritious, and delicious meals made from natural ingredients. The company focuses on sustainability and sources its ingredients locally, minimizing its carbon footprint.
2. Goldbelly
5-year search growth: 1275%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2012
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $133.1M (Series C)
What they do: As a heavy display marketer and retargeting advertiser, users might be familiar with Goldbelly from popular social platforms. Goldbelly’s business model is simple: ship iconic dishes from famous restaurants around the U.S. directly to your doorstep.
Lobster Rolls from Maine’s finest, Philly Cheesesteaks from Philadelphia, bagels from Brooklyn. Goldbelly scouts for the most popular joints and then offer up their most popular menu item to hungry consumers.
With over $100M in funding, investors seem to love their careful curation and food offerings.
3. Vinovest
5-year search growth: 600%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2019
Location: Culver City, California
Funding: Undisclosed (Series A)
What they do: Vinovest is a startup that allows investors to purchase and trade shares of fine wine as an alternative investment. With Vinovest, users can build a portfolio of diverse wine investments, and the company handles all aspects of buying, storing, insuring, and selling the wine on their behalf.
4. Mouth
5-year search growth: 63%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2012
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Funding: $8.4M (Series A)
What they do: Mouth can be considered a crossover between Etsy and Goldbelly. In other words, they serve up crowdsourced, homemade foods ranging from cheese to chocolate. Mouth also offers subscription boxes to customers who can’t get enough of their gourmet gifts.
Customers have three choices: curated gift boxes made by Mouth, subscription boxes with treats (like craft pickles), or building your own gift box with handpicked elements.
5. Sophie’s Kitchen
5-year search growth: 100%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2010
Location: Dover, Delaware
Funding: $5.6M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Sophie’s Kitchen makes vegan seafood alternatives. Their hits include shrimp, crab cakes, fish fillets, and smoked salmon. As one of the few vegan seafood companies to hit the major supermarkets, Sophie’s has something of a first mover advantage in the space.
6. WildWay
5-year search growth: 112%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2014
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Funding: Undisclosed (Non-Equity Assistance)
What they do: Wildway takes pride in their all-natural, good-for-you range of snacks. They’ve kept their product line lean so far, focusing on Keto Hot Cereal, Snack Mixes, and Grain-Free Granola as their signature products.
Wildway’s been featured in major publications like Women’s Health and Paleo Magazine.
7. Creator
5-year search growth: 75%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2009
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $18.7M (Convertible Note)
What they do: Creator out of SF has come up with an entirely new concept: preparing customized burgers cooked by a proprietary robot. Creator’s machine handles every step of the burger creating process. The bread is sliced to order, cheese is grated directly onto the bun before melting, and patties are carefully seasoned.
Taking humans out of the equation has allowed Creator to pour most of their budget into food. Which has resulted in quality burgers at affordable prices.
8. Brewbird
5-year search growth: 0%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2012
Location: San Mateo, California
Funding: Undisclosed (Series A)
What they do: Brewbird is aiming to build a technology platform that “scales the specialty coffee experience”, providing a marketplace for entrepreneurial roasters to sell their coffee through Brewbird.
Brewbird’s signature product is a single-serve coffee brewer that uses whole bean pods. Through Brewbird’s marketplace, the independent coffee roaster will be able to sell their prized product in a single-serve format. Single-serve coffee is an enormous market. As of 2019, 42% of Americans own a single-serve coffee machine.
9. Rheal
5-year search growth: 316%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2017
Location: Newcastle, United Kingdom
Funding: $1.2M (Equity Crowdfunding)
What they do: Rheal is a food startup that offers plant-based, ready-to-eat meals delivered straight to customers' doors. Their meals are made with sustainably-sourced ingredients and are free from dairy, gluten, and refined sugar. They aim to provide healthy and convenient options for those with busy lifestyles who want to prioritize their health and the environment.
10. Hapi Drinks
5-year search growth: 0%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2011
Location: Austin, Texas
Funding: $2.4M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Hapi Drinks is targeting one of America’s greatest health dangers: childhood obesity. The CDC estimates the prevalence of obesity in children is around 19.7%. Hapi Drinks noticed the problem and their solution is a line of sugar-free drinks with flavors comparable to a Capri Sun or Sunny Delight.
Instead of simply making the drinks sugar-free and leaving it there, Hapi also loads their drinks with Vitamin C (around 90% daily value) and uses only all-natural ingredients.
11. Rule Breaker
5-year search growth: 52%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2015
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Funding: $114K (Equity Crowdfunding)
What they do: Rule Breaker is a twist on the classic cookie and brownie. Instead of dairy-packed, gluten-rich sweet treats, Rule Breaker has rolled out a line of vegan treats that are also gluten-free. For every bag of Rule Breaker Bites purchased, one is donated to a food bank to help with food insecurity.
Rule Breaker was also featured on Shark Tank, the Today Show, and numerous mainstream publications.
12. Pared
5-year search growth: 51%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2015
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $28M (Series B)
What they do: Pared is a matching network that pairs food and beverage workers with restaurants that need assistance. The company is a resource for both chefs that needs staff and food workers that need jobs.
Billing itself as a sort of Linkedin for the food and beverage industry, Pared lets users build a comprehensive profile that highlights work history and experiences, industry connections and recommendations, and relevant content and industry job openings.
13. Flaviar
5-year search growth: 23%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2012
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $13.9M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Not surprisingly, alcohol sales skyrocketed over the pandemic. Flaviar emerged as a spirits club allowing members to try a range of different liquors. Through their subscription service, members are able to try expensive liquors that might normally be too pricey to buy without tasting first.
14. HydroMATE
5-year search growth: 450%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2019
Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: HydroMATE is a water bottle manufacturer that produces smart water bottles designed to help people stay hydrated throughout the day. The bottles are equipped with sensors that track the amount of water consumed and provide reminders to drink more water, helping to promote healthy habits and prevent dehydration.
15. Bevi
5-year search growth: 5%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2013
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Funding: $130.3M (Series D)
What they do: Bevi is a beverage startup. They’ve created the Bevi Bottleless Water Dispensers, which are essentially commercial grade office ready smart dispensers for sparkling (or plain) water in the office.
Dispensing is done entirely through a smartphone app with no touching of dirty screens required. Bevi has smart internet monitoring to make sure flavor supplies remain stocked and alert the office manager when anything is wrong with it.
A large Series D round means that Bevi can get a headstart on modernizing the outdated office vending machine and water fountains, and make them relics of the past.
16. Remedy Organics
5-year search growth: 180%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2014
Location: Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Funding: Undisclosed (Non-Equity Assistance)
What they do: One of ten companies that PepsiCo sees as the future of food and beverage, NJ-based Remedy makes plant based juices and smoothies that are packed with popular ingredients like cocoa, MCT oil, dates and more. Sleek packaging and thoughtful, focused product lines also helps drive Remedy’s growing market share.
17. Thistle
5-year search growth: -100%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2013
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $17M (Series B)
What they do: Thistle is a DTC subscription offering healthy salads and vegan or vegetarian options. With a similar business model to Freshly and other meal delivery providers, Thistle has taken the angle of being the healthy go-to choice in the marketplace.
In addition to their healthy meal offerings, Thistle also makes their own cold-pressed juices that can be added to a meal plan or delivered individually.
18. Dash Water
5-year search growth: 463%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2017
Location: London, England
Funding: $12.3M (Series A)
What they do: Dash Water is a sustainable beverage startup that produces sparkling water infused with an assortment of fruit and vegetable flavors. The company aims to reduce food waste by utilizing imperfect produce that would otherwise go to waste, and their packaging is 100% recyclable.
19. Bohana
5-year search growth: -25%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2018
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Funding: Undisclosed (Seed)
What they do: Bohana’s entire business is built around one ingredient and one product: the popped water lily seed. One of the recent top health food trends across the country, water lily seeds are native to Asia and are considered a superfood.
Bohana capitalized on this barely known seed and turned it into a healthy alternative to popcorn.
20. Cozymeal
5-year search growth: -31%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2014
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: Undisclosed (Series A)
What they do: Cozymeal has dug out a niche in the food and beverage space by providing a marketplace that matches local chefs with teams or individuals who are looking for memorable cooking classes. Users can choose which city they want to take a class in, what kind of dish (risotto or Spanish tapas or sushi) they want to learn how to cook, and then book.
During the pandemic, Cozymeal pivoted to offering select cooking classes online. Everything from mixology to whisky tasting is still on offer for company team-building activities or the individual connoisseur.
Conclusion
The future looks bright in the food and beverage space, with these startups going a long way to proving how tech can be combined with traditional space to create spectacular results.
Food delivery, sourcing world-class dishes and shipping everything direct to doorsteps are just a few examples of what is sure to be a booming sector moving forward.