Grow Food

The service for the delivery of food sets Grow Food was founded in St. Petersburg, its creators are Daniel Halper and Pavel Paskar.

History

2024: Marathon Group bought stake in Grow Food

On February 1, 2024, it became known about the sale of a stake in Grow Food to an investment company, Marathon Group which is the largest shareholder in the retailer Magnet"." The deal is closed.

According to Forbes, Marathon Group bought the number of shares more than the blocking stake in Grow Food, but less than the controlling one. The amount of the transaction is estimated at 4-4.5 billion rubles, according to the publication of the magazine.

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Marathon Group and Grow Food did not respond to questions from the publication. Grow Food co-founder Danielle Halper said he "does not know what rumours the information is based on and in the current situation it would be wrong to spread on shareholder structure issues."

According to the database "Kontur. Focus," the legal entity Grow Food "GF Trade" until July 2023 belonged to the Cypriot Vinda, now - registered in Kaliningrad "Winda Limited." Its owners were not disclosed by early February 2024.

Marathon Group's interest in Grow Food is understandable, says Mikhail Burmistrov, CEO of INFOLine Analytics. - Grow Food is the second-biggest player in the ready-to-eat food market. The company demonstrates a stable business model, and in 2022-2023 it is actively developing in the budget segment and has significant business expansion potential when entering cities outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.

According to the expert, Grow Food has the potential for synergy with Magnit. For example, Grow Food will be able to use its own production facilities to supply finished culinary products under the Kitchen brand to the retailer's shelves, this will accelerate the return on investment and expand the manufacturer's geography, Burmistrov argues. In his opinion, this kind of synergy has many prospects. Magnit is now actively developing food sales, especially in the Moscow region, and Grow Food has experience in selling healthy foods.

In addition, the customer base of Grow Food is largely an audience that monitors its nutrition, goes in for sports, and it may be interested in online offers from Magnit supermarkets and hypermarkets, as well as the Magnit Market marketplace, - added the CEO of INFOLine Analytics[1]

2021: Service launch in Spain

On October 21, 2021, it became known about the launch of Grow Food outside Russia. The first country outside the Russian Federation in which the grocery kit delivery service began to operate was Spain.

As the representative of Grow Food told Vedomosti, dishes are prepared at the production site in the center of Madrid with an area of ​ ​ 1000 sq.m. The food programme from Grow Food in Spain costs between €36 and €57 a day depending on calorie content. Through the Grow Food Spain app, you can select a meal plan, the number of days to deliver and order. The minimum order is a diet designed for three days. Before the launch in Spain, Grow Food worked only in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Russian grocery kit delivery service Grow Food launched in Spain

After actively growing in two capitals for six years, we decided to launch in the third. But no longer in Russia. We conducted a special study of our delivery concept for its applicability in other countries (in total, we considered 12 countries, including, UAE,, Spain,, France,, England) and were Germany Poland Denmark Sweden surprised to find that this model was best perceived in Spain, "said Pavel Paskar, CEO and co-founder of Grow Food.

According to him, the Spanish consumer is considered quite close in mentality and peculiarities of behavior to the Russian one. In addition, Spain has a very sports audience that has a request for high-quality balanced nutrition, he said.

Paskar added that the company hopes to gain a foothold in Madrid, and after the first quarter of work there, a decision will be made on the further development of business in the region.

2016-2017: Investment from AddVenture

In 2016, the Grow Food service attracted 30 million rubles from AddVenture, and a year later the fund invested about 300 million rubles in Grow Food.^[2]

Notes