Full Harvest, a San Francisco-based marketplace for excess produce, closed an $8.5 million Series A round of financing led by Spark Capital, San Francisco. Joining the round are new investors, including Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, Chicago; Rent the Runway founder Jenny Fleiss; Jon Scherr, head of strategic partnerships for CircleUp; and Adam Zeplain, co-founder and managing partner of Mark.vc, as well as previous investors, including Wireframe Ventures, San Francisco

“An astounding amount of produce is wasted today in the United States, but the intuitive and beautifully designed Full Harvest online marketplace is starting to change this dynamic and is already delivering dramatic business benefits for its customers,” says John Melas-Kyriazi, investor at Spark Capital. “By aggregating excess produce supply at scale and providing a superior user experience to growers and food buyers via software, Full Harvest is shifting the way the industry thinks about how produce is bought and sold.”

Full Harvest will use the Series A investment to eradicate food waste at the farm level by further scaling its technology platform, significantly expanding its U.S. footprint and tripling the size of its technology, sales and operations teams.

“Full Harvest delivers measurable benefits to all stakeholders,” says Dan Phillips, managing director of Cultivian Sandbox Ventures. “Farms gain access to a new profit center and buyers achieve convenience and cost savings, all while meeting growing consumer demand for sustainably sourced food products.”

“We need to move beyond the archaic nature of buying and selling produce to get the most from each harvest and make sure no food goes to waste. Our marketplace will drive a waste-free future on produce farms that benefits growers, food and beverage companies and consumers,” adds Christine Moseley, founder and CEO of Full Harvest. “Using this investment to expand nationally and roll out new platform capabilities and produce offerings, Full Harvest will get more produce directly from farms to food and beverage producers—faster, fresher, more affordably and with advanced traceability.”

Melas-Kyriazi and Phillips will join the Full Harvest board of directors.