Online Grocer Farmstead Adds Austin as Its Next Delivery Hub

Online grocer Farmstead, on the heels of introducing a delivery partnership with DoorDash, announced that it will expand service to Austin, Texas, making the tech-happy and startup-friendly city Farmstead's fifth hub.

Farmstead, founded in Burlingame, Calif., in 2016, currently operates in the Bay Area as well as in Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C. The company has stated plans to be in more than a dozen markets, including Nashville and Miami by the end of 2021.

Farmstead expects to be up and running in Austin by mid-year, according to a news release. A 1,000-person waitlist for grocery delivery through the service opened May 3. 

Operating a "dark store" business model with warehouses that stock national grocery brands as well as local-favorite labels (including locally sourced produce, meat and dairy, when possible), Farmstead delivers to customers within a 50-mile radius of its warehouse hubs. Without the overhead and front-of-store vs. back-of-store inventory management challenges of a traditional grocery store, the company touts, Farmstead is able to offer free delivery without product markups and provides real-time product availability to shoppers while reducing food waste. 

"Farmstead can deliver real value to Austin because we cracked the code on how to make grocery delivery fast and inexpensive without sacrificing quality or wasting food," CEO Pradeep Elankumaran said in a release. In November, Farmstead announced that it had raised $7.9 million in a Series A funding round.

Late last month, Farmstead named Paul Johnson, a former director of engineering at Netflix, as head of operations excellence. Johnson most recently was operations director at the U.K.'s Atom Supplies, a global drinks producer, distributor and retailer. In his new role at Farmstead, Johnson will be responsible for helping scale the company's online grocery operations to facilitate its ambitious expansion plans.