Sprig raised $56.7M to cook and deliver every meal itself — and starved

Sprig launched in San Francisco in 2013 with the heaviest model in food delivery: it sourced its own ingredients, cooked in its own kitchens and ran its own couriers, serving a rotating daily menu delivered hot in as little as fifteen minutes. Investors put in $56.7 million to scale what was effectively a restaurant, a logistics company and a farm supplier at once.

Vertical integration meant every meal carried the full weight of kitchens, staff and fleet. A Chicago expansion ended in layoffs and retreat; late pivots — walk-in pickup, a partnership with delivery marketplace Caviar — did not change the arithmetic.

On 26 May 2017 CEO Gagan Biyani announced Sprig would shut its app that day: 'the complexity of owning meal production through delivery at scale was a challenge.' Four years, two cities and $56.7 million ended in one apology to customers and staff.