Personalized Shopping App Jow Raises $13M for U.S. Expansion

French company has worked with Kroger since 2022

2/8/2024

Left to right: Jow's co-founders Jacques-Edouard Sabatier, Antoine Maillard and Franck Maurin

As it expands in the United States, Jow, a Paris-based personalized menu recommendation app, has raised $13 million in an extension round of funding led by global investor Northzone, bringing Jow’s total Series A funding to $33 million. Existing backers, including Eurazeo, also took part in the round.

Jow has built a base of 6 million users by teaming with eight of the largest grocery retailers in France, among them Carrefour, Auchan and Intermarché, but with this injection of capital, the company can grow in United states through integrations with such grocery giants as Kroger, with which it has worked since 2022. To that end, Jow has established a local team in New York.

“A digital personal shopper, kitchen help, and life coach, Jow helps families eat well, and reduce cost as well as waste,” explained Jow co-founder and CEO Jacques-Edouard Sabatier. “Over 150 million meals have been prepared thanks to Jow, and each typically includes 25% more fresh ingredients and 15% less waste. We are extremely proud to offer families a way to eat better, reduce waste and lighten the mental load of meal preparation.”

”We are super excited to partner with Jacques-Edouard and the whole team at Jow, as we believe they have the potential to become a truly category-defining company within the food space,” noted Jessica Schultz, partner at Northzone and previously co-founder of HelloFresh, who is joining Jow’s board. “By changing the way consumers think about meal planning and grocery shopping, while at the same time enabling retailers to broaden their distribution and FMCG companies to become more data-driven, they are approaching this trillion-dollar industry with a novel approach.”

Jow’s app syncs up with existing e-grocers to accomplish consumers’ weekly shopping in minutes on mobile. Users are able to order entirely personalized menus from a large database of recipes, tailored to such considerations as dietary restrictions, dislikes, favorite brands and kitchen equipment available at home. Consumers then place the order from their own preferred online grocery store – choosing delivery or pickup as they prefer – and can add to their carts the weekly staples they would normally buy at the grocery store.

Users can shop with Jow at Kroger and the majority of its banners to get their meals planned for delivery or pick up in 35 states, according to a company spokeswoman, who also told Progressive Grocer that Jow was in the final phases of securing two large retailer partnerships as well, although she couldn’t divulge details yet.

Serving more than 11 million customers daily through digital shopping and retail food stores under a variety of banner names, Cincinnati-based Kroger is No. 4 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2023 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. PG also named Kroger one of the Retailers of the Century. Berlin-based HelloFresh operates in 18 international markets and is No. 46 on The PG 100. The company has U.S. offices in New York, Chicago and Boulder, Colo.