5.6% of the population is Asian American; 3.2% Middle Eastern; 17% various Hispanic and Latino ethnicities. That’s about 81 million people of non-European descent--what we are calling ethnic--representing a market size of $65 - $100 billion annually in the US.
Ethnic food is important to these ethnic communities. Even though people of various backgrounds are taking food out or eating in restaurants from time-to-time, they still enjoy the comfort of cooking the foods they grew up eating at home. But ethnic grocery stores are few and far between, making ethnic food inaccessible and hard to procure for many customers. The market is being ignored by the big players in both the grocery store and grocery delivery spaces.
For the ethnic community, ethnic food is more than just food. It is not just comfort food, or a connection to home, but also part of an identity.
With a friendly, empathetic, and responsive customer service team that understands the cultural nuances and is prompt in responding to orders and delivery issues.
Our customers are spreading the word about Fretch. Because we are bootstrapped, all our growth has come organically through word of mouth and user recommendations. We have delivered over 25,000 orders to 5,000 unique customers and are currently operating at a $1.1 million annual revenue run rate. Although grocery is considered a ‘volume business’ as economies of scale come into play, we have had a laser focus on profitability since day one, and as a result we are currently month-over-month cash flow positive.
We’ve experienced positive quarter-over-quarter growth since 2015 and are on track for substantial growth in 2019.
We constantly seek feedback, and listen closely to our customers no matter what they have to say. We pride ourselves in a perfect 5 star rating on Facebook and Google. Some of our reviews:
We have over 5,000 unique customers. 1,378 of them have placed at least 5 orders with us, and 183 of them have placed at least 25 orders! When a customer places an order with Fretch for the first time, there is an over 70% chance s/he will place another order with us, without any present marketing effort!
We are in the business of delivering ethnic groceries to ethnic communities in major metropolitan areas like New York, and we are committed to making Fretch the go-to grocery delivery service for such communities through a unique combination of speed, convenience, variety, savings, transparency and an overall superior shopping experience.
Our current cost of acquisition of a customer is $10.50 and the average order size in $80. The current lifetime value of our customers is $225 (on gross profit over a one year time period).
Total retail and food services sales in the U.S. in 2017 were around $5.5 trillion, and grocery store sales specifically totaled $641 billion.
And if 25% of the U.S. population identifies as part of an ethnic community--that is about 81 million people. Here’s the breakdown:
Assuming 50% interest and utilization, the ethnic grocery market size can be estimated to be about 10-15% of the U.S. grocery store sales ($641 B) or about $65 billion-$100 billion annually in the US.
Our primary competitors are Amazon Fresh, Freshdirect, Peapod, and other ethnic retail outlets. But our sheer variety of offerings within a particular ethnic niche makes us the comprehensive go-to service for the grocery requirements of that ethnic group. Most ethnic community-specific retail outlets, on the other hand, do not have a nimble, local delivery system in place and are severely limited in reach. We’re really out on our own when it comes to offering online orders and delivery in the ethnic grocery space.
Furthermore, our consistent focus on maintaining high product quality, packaging, and a world-class customer experience, coupled with investments in setting up business and technology processes to enable a seamless loop of orders, fulfillment and feedback puts us in a very serious position to capture a big piece of this lucrative pie.
Fretch started with the Founder’s personal funds and savings of about $200K. Loans were taken from friends and family along the way that have now been completely paid off.
We 100% bootstrapped, and are now profitable with a healthy growth trend. That said, we want to expand faster, and spend more on growth, technology and marketing, for which we’re looking for funding that will further fuel our next growth spurt (see roadmap below).
We are in talks with a few high profile angel investors, but primarily, it’s all right here at Republic.
Within the last year, our focus has been to perfect our business model and the internal processes, and most importantly, to establish profitability within the model. Having achieved sustained profitability and established benchmarks for various internal processes from inventory management to staff management to product quality management, we are now at a point where we are primed to grow exponentially. The business model, the processes, and the financial numbers can support this growth.
Our focus now is to invest in user acquisition, customer retention, and E-Commerce technology to materialize the growth.
We envision the next phase of the company to replicate the business model that we have built so far to expand into other ethnicities and geographies within the US.
The Fretch team has just the right experience for what we’re doing:
And most of all, we not only share a love of food, but we also have a deep understanding of the problem experienced personally, and by friends and family.
Let’s celebrate the diversity of our great country with one of its most important cultural ingredients - food! Get in on the ground floor while you still can!
$12,000,000
The maximum valuation at which your investment converts
into equity shares or cash.
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12%
If a trigger event for Fretch occurs, the discount provision
gives investors equity shares (or equal value in cash) at a reduced price.
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$1.07M
Fretch must achieve its minimum goal of $25K before the deadline. The maximum amount the offering can raise is $1.07M.
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Crowd SAFE
A SAFE allows an investor to make a cash investment in a company, with rights to receive certain company stock at a later date, in connection with a specific event.
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Food delivery, fresh ingredients, and creative alternatives that are easily prepared represent the future of meals at home. Fretch can scale good service to customers like me.
FrETCH is a brilliant initiative from the founders to simplify, and modernise (ethnic) grocery shopping catering to the South East Asian community local to the New York City area.
I invested because I feel it’s a brilliant concept of delivering Indian food products in New York straight to your home and this can really expand in future and the company can have great valuation.
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