Lake Nona Sports & Health Tech Fund and Refinery Ventures Co-Led the Round for the FoodHealth Industry Innovator.
Other powerhouse investors include Mudita Venture Partners, Harvest Ridge Capital, BDMI (part of Bertelsmann’s corporate venture arm, Bertelsmann Investments), and Alex Morgan & Servando Carrasco’s Trybe Ventures
DENVER, June 22, 2023 — bitewell, the first ever corporate food health benefits provider, announced the oversubscribed close of their $4M seed round spearheaded by Lake Nona Sports & Health Tech Fund and Refinery Ventures. Participants in the round include Alex Morgan’s Trybe Ventures, Mudita Venture Partners, Harvest Ridge Capital and Bertlesmann’s BDMI, among others.
“bitewell fits perfectly within our thesis of investing in companies bettering human experiences, and we see their contribution through the lens of nutrition and food accessibility,” said Justin Driscoll, Associate at Lake Nona Sports & Health Tech Fund. “By pushing employers to offer food benefits that provide employees with healthier eating options and give them greater control, transparency, and the capacity to monitor their own health, the company is well-positioned to redefine how the world thinks about health benefits. Sam and Chris possess all the characteristics we look for in founders — operational grit, domain expertise, consumer-obsessed mentality, and are vision-driven. We are excited to see bitewell challenge the status quo in a market ripe for disruption.”
Co-founded by Samantha Citro Alexander and Chris Fanucchi, bitewell plans to dedicate the funds to their creation of the groundbreaking ‘Food as Health Benefits’ category. More specifically, bitewell will invest the funds to strengthen its leadership team with best-in-class executive hires, nationally scale their sales division, fund research efforts with leading academic institutions, and build out more advanced technology and data infrastructure for the brand.
“This is the start of an accelerated growth path to spread foodhealth benefits across the country. We took our time carefully choosing partners who believe wholeheartedly that the future of health is food, just like we do,” said Samantha Citro Alexander, co-founder and CEO of bitewell. “Looking forward now is both encouraging and empowering, knowing that we have partners who believe in the bitewell mission and will not compromise on our drive to achieve it.”
bitewell’s revolutionary FoodHealth Score, which ranges from 0-10 and uses a simple grey/red/yellow/green color system, is incorporated into its massive food marketplace. This Score helps users navigate food shopping with customized health goals in mind. Similar to a credit score for food, every food purchase is scored, and the aggregate Score of all food purchases helps users understand if their diet is net-accretive or net-dilutive to their health.
“Now is the perfect time for a service like bitewell. Employer-sponsored benefit plans persist because employers know the importance of having healthy employees,” said Tim Schigel, Managing Partner of Refinery Ventures. “Healthy nutrition is the next step for companies looking to improve the lives of their staff.”
For the first time ever, bitewell’s individualized FoodHealth Score enables subscribed employers – and their employees – to buy food based on healthfulness. bitewell’s marketplace allows users to shop for groceries, restaurant meals, meal kits, and more, applying this health-first lens to more than 85% of the US food supply.
For more information on the platform and product offerings, please visit bitewell.com.
About bitewell
Founded in 2020, bitewell believes in the power of improving health through food. Purpose-built by food lovers, nutrition experts, and technologists to be the smartest place to shop for food, bitewell is a healthy food marketplace that works directly with employers to provide food health benefits, reducing insurance premiums and improving health for users. The platform utilizes food experts to make healthy eating simpler and smarter by applying a customized FoodHealth Score – think credit score, but for food – to the foods users are eating. Recognized by the Denver Business Journal as one of the top start-ups to watch in 2023, the Denver-based company developed a simpler way to personalize food delivery options by implementing a customized nutritional guide, creating an intentional food shopping experience without sacrificing or limiting options.
To find out more about bitewell, please visit www.bitewell.com. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook to stay in the loop on the latest news and updates.
About Lake Nona Sports & Health Tech Fund
The Lake Nona Sports & Health Tech Fund invests in seed-stage companies that are bettering human experiences through sports and health technology. Launched as a partnership between leAD Sports & Health Tech Partners and Tavistock Group, the $30m fund supports its portfolio with access to a broad platform of resources, services, an international network of strategic domain and industry experts, world-class infrastructure, and smart capital. For more information, please visit: www.lakenonafund.com
About Refinery Ventures
Established in 2017 by Tim Schigel, Refinery Ventures is an investment firm focused on disruptive, Early Scale companies. Drawing from his extensive experience in founding and serving as CEO of ShareThis, the most recognizable icon on the Internet, to creating the Cintrifuse Syndicate Fund, raising over $120 million, Schigel build Refinery Ventures to bridge the gap between the Seed and Series A. Refinery Ventures is located in Cincinnati, Ohio. Learn more at www.refinery.com.
SOURCE bitewell
