After a solid year of growth, New York-based Freshly is opening up a manufacturing facility in LA, which will bring over 130 new jobs to the metro area.
Freshly is a meal delivery startup that ships boxes of chef-cooked meals to people across the country. Freshly is similar to other food box subscription services, like Blue Apron or Home Chef, except the meals are already prepared. All you have to do is heat them up and eat them.
Founded in 2012, the company has been especially successful as of late. As of this year, the company has doubled its order volume and now delivers over one million meals per week. The company is on track to ship out 50 million meals by the end of the year.
“In 2020, Freshly hit a huge milestone delivering over one million meals weekly, and opening our first facility on the West Coast will help power our continued growth,” founder and CEO Mike Wystrach said in a statement. “As more people look to balance convenience and nutrition with their meals and shift to ordering food online, this Los Angeles facility will help us continue to scale and meet growing consumer demand.”
The new manufacturing facility will take up 111,260 square feet of space in the city of Commerce. The facility will begin operating in December in order to help Freshly produce 20 percent more meals. Then in March of 2021, the facility will enter its second phase of operations, where it’ll help increase order fulfillment by 22 percent. It’s currently hiring for operations, human resources, meal distribution and maintenance roles for the LA facility.
Freshly also has facilities in New Jersey, Maryland and Arizona, but this new facility will be the first in the region. It will also help better serve Freshly customers in the area.
“The new LA facility gives Freshly the opportunity to expand both its manufacturing capacity and menu variety. In addition to bringing new jobs to the local area, the strategic geographic location of the facility will allow Freshly to reduce the order-to-delivery cycle time to our West Coast customer base,” SVP of operations Richard Stoecklein said in a statement.
