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Plated sends ingredients to customers who cook meals themselves.

It appears that the appetite for food-related startups is not going away anytime soon for investors.

Foodtrepreneurs reeled in more dough today, with New York City-based meal-kit delivery startup Plated raising $15 million in a Series A round. There was also a big $60 million round for FoodPanda, an online-based food delivery service that operates in 40 countries.

This is the latest capital being injected into what’s becoming a competitive food delivery space and comes just one week after Square purchased San Francisco-based food delivery startup Caviar for $90 million.

After trying out several of these new delivery services here in Seattle, we wondered last month if there was some sort of food delivery bubble forming.

Sherpa Ventures co-founder Scott Stanford.
Sherpa Ventures co-founder Scott Stanford.

Scott Stanford, whose Sherpa Ventures firm led a $28 million Series B round in Munchery, told us that with the amount of people eating every day, and the new demand for having items arrive at your door within minutes, there is room for many entrepreneurs coming up with new ways to get grub to your door.

Stanford added that he has “tremendous confidence” in Munchery’s business model, and predicted that there could be even more similar companies with how big the addressable food market is.

“There are several startups going after food, but there are over 600,000 restaurants in the U.S.,” he said. “If the market has already proven that it can support that many restaurants, I would argue that there is room for one, two, five, or ten more coming at it from a completely different angle.”

Caviar CEO Jason Wang.
Caviar CEO Jason Wang.

Caviar CEO Jason Wang noted that “it almost feels like a bit of a land grab.”

“It’s a rush right now,” Wang told GeekWire last month. “I think eventually, there will only be a few players that will win the market.”

The Wall Street Journal story on the latest Plated funding quotes an investor who touted Plated’s back-end technology as a competitive advantage. That’s similar to what Bitesquad CEO Kian Salehi told us last month when he said that the food companies who master the back-end dispatch part of the delivery system will come out on top.

“It’s a low-margin business,” said Salehi, who employs more than 200 in two markets. “Those that succeed will be the ones with the most advanced and efficient technology.”

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