The Minnow pod (image courtesy of the company)

Minnow, a startup that has developed an internet-enabled kiosk that provides contact-free food pickup, has raised $2.2 million as COVID has driven interest in contactless technologies.

The company, which is based in Seattle now, was originally founded in 2017 in Portland and is still home to its hardware and sale teams, Steven Sperry, Minnow’s co-founder and CEO, told Maine Startups Insider.

The company’s self-service, internet-enabled food kiosks, called Minnow pods, provide an easy way for food providers to serve customers in a contactless way. Here’s how it works: People order their meals online and later go to the pod to pick it up. The latest version of the pod is made up of 10 locked cubbies—some refrigerated, some heated—and has a touchless interface that allows customers to use their mobile phones to open the locked cubby that contains the meal they ordered.

The original idea was to deploy these pods in large office buildings and provide restaurants a way to expand their footprint in larger cities. But the use cases have expanded since the pandemic hit the country.

Since the outbreak, Minnow has been overwhelmed with demand for its pods, Sperry said.

“Before COVID, we were operating pods in seven large office buildings in Portland, Ore., as part of a year-long field test,” he said. “Once COVID hit in March and the office buildings emptied out, we focused on a different use case, which is to install the pods in restaurants, cafeterias, food halls, ghost kitchens, and other food businesses to provide contact-free pickup for online, phone, and delivery orders.”

To keep up with the demand, the company is accelerating production of its first commercial model, the Minnow P5 Pickup Pod, and is accepting pre-orders for the first batch of production units.

Maine roots
Steven Sperry (left), Michaela McVetty, and Yona Belfort, co-founders of Minnow (then called Veebie), with their prototype self-service food kiosk in Portland, Maine, in 2017.

Sperry was living in Maine when he co-founded Minnow with Michaela McVetty, owner of Sisters Gourmet Deli on Monument Square, and Yona Belfort, who ran his own product design firm in Portland. The company went by a few names in its first few years, including Veebie and Kadabra.

The company initially tested a prototype of its food pod in downtown Portland, Maine, in October 2017 and the next year ran a more substantive beta test in Portland, Ore.

Sperry, who had come to Maine from Seattle, decided to move back to the Pacific Northwest after the company’s raised its first seed round in 2018. The lead investor in that round was Elevate Capital, a Portland, Ore.-based venture capital firm.

However, McVetty and Belfort remained in Portland. McVetty left the company in 2019, but Belfort, who serves as Minnow’s VP of Hardware, still lives and works in the Portland area.
Chuck Thompson, Minnow’s VP of Sales & Business Development, is also based in Portland, Maine, Sperry said.

Sperry wouldn’t share specific employee counts, “but I can say we’ve hired employees in Maine this year and that we plan to continue to hire in Maine as we grow.”

Asked if the company planned to roll out the commercial use of Minnow pods in Maine any time soon, Sperry said the company’s initial target markets were the 50 largest cities in the United States. But the local restaurant industry will have a chance to get a sneak peak at Minnow’s latest technology, Sperry said.

“In a few weeks we will be installing one of our latest model pods in a barn in Yarmouth. We’re planning to invite local restaurants owners to come to the barn and see the pod in action,” he said. “It will be an interesting juxtaposition of the old and the new.”

Investment details

Elevate Capital, the Portland, Ore.-based VC fund that led the original seed round, also led this latest financing round. The company originally set out to raise $1.5 million, but accepted investments totaling $2.2 million, Sperry said.

“We’re thrilled to be able to help power Minnow’s growth,” Nitin Rai, Elevate Capital’s Managing Director, said in a statement. “Minnow has everything we look for in an investment—a passionate team of experienced entrepreneurs, a bold and disruptive vision, defensible technology, and an enormous market opportunity.”

Other investors in this latest round include Portland (Oregon) Seed Fund and LPC Ventures, the venture capital arm of Lincoln Property Company.

“With Minnow, we see a solution that will not only help our properties adapt to the realities of COVID-19, but also provide our tenants with a convenient, technologically-enhanced amenity,” Eric Roseman, VP of Innovation & Technology Ventures for Lincoln Property Company, said in a statement. “It’s all about creating those compelling experiences and reducing friction.”