Sprig

Sprig was a San Francisco-based food delivery startup that operated its own kitchens, employed its own chefs, and delivered meals through its own courier network. Unlike Uber Eats or DoorDash, which are marketplaces connecting restaurants to customers, Sprig controlled the entire supply chain — from ingredient sourcing to cooking to delivery. The result was high-quality, healthy meals delivered in under 20 minutes, priced at $10-$15. Customers loved it. The product reviews were stellar, with users praising the food quality and speed. Sprig raised $56 million from top-tier VCs including Greylock Partners and Accel, and at its peak served thousands of meals per day in San Francisco and Chicago. But the vertically integrated model was a financial nightmare. Each meal cost Sprig far more to produce and deliver than the price customers paid. The company was losing money on every order, and increasing volume only increased losses. A meal priced at $12 might cost $20+ to prepare and deliver when accounting for kitchen rent, chef salaries, ingredient costs, and courier wages. By 2017, Sprig had burned through most of its funding without a path to profitability. CEO Gagan Biyani (who later co-founded Maven) tried to raise additional capital but investors were no longer willing to fund the unit economics gap. Sprig shut down in May 2017, laying off all employees. The closure was one of the early signals that the 'on-demand everything' era had fundamental economic limitations. Several similar companies — SpoonRocket, Maple, Munchery — met the same fate, collectively proving that vertical integration in food delivery creates unsustainable cost structures at venture-backed scale.