Ventech China’s A round portfolio company Summer Farm announced the completion of new financing round. In these years, we have seen Summer Farm continue to cultivate its operation efficiency and optimize its business model; on the other hand, it has also expanded to multiple scenarios and made new breakthroughs in every aspect of the "one-stop supply chain". 

Summer Farm was founded in 2016. It has entered the catering B2B supply chain business from casual catering, providing supply chain solutions for brands or stores in tea, coffee, baking and other fields. It has provided services to 300,000+ casual catering business users. Previously, Summer Farm has completed multiple rounds of financing, the latest round being the official announcement of hundreds of millions of RMB in Series C financing in November 2021.

Grow with the wave of national expansion of casual catering brands

In the past few years, China's casual catering market has experienced explosive growth, and the battle for "thousands of stores" has continued to this day. Typical representatives include Mixue, Luckin Coffee, etc. In the new tea beverage field, Heytea has opened its doors for franchising. The scale of brands such as Tea Baidao, Goodme has increased dramatically. By the end of 2023, the number of Guming stores has exceeded 9,000. “When a brand decides to expand across the country, it actually needs the support of the supply chain team.” Yang Han, co-founder of Summer Farm, told 36Kr.

Therefore, at the time of the last round of financing, Summer Farm's main strategy was "national expansion", and it has achieved this goal in stage. Meanwhile, Summer Farm has also grown from a first & second-tier cities have expanded to third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities. Currently, the number of covered city has reached approximately 180, and even next-day delivery is achieved in some fourth- and fifth-tier cities.

In fact, since the establishment of Summer Farm, the overall strategy has not undergone any major changes. In Yang Han's view, the entire industry is still in a growth cycle. Summer Farm's mission at this stage is still to build "infrastructure for casual catering supply chain", but it needs a deeper understanding of this matter than in the past.

Build an ultimate “one-stop” supply chain 

Specific to business performance, on the one hand, in the wave of national expansion of casual catering brands, Summer Farm, as a supply chain party, provides them with basic service facilities “one-step earlier". On the other hand, Summer Farm has also simultaneously made new breakthroughs in every aspect of the "one-stop supply chain".

Yang Han told 36Kr, “Brands have different demands on the supply chain at different stages of development.” For example, some casual catering brands choose to build their own warehousing and logistics after they mature. They may not need the terminal capabilities of the supply chain, but there is still a demand for Product R&D.”

Faced with this situation, Summer Farm has set a system of production area selection, quality control and farmer management models, as well as the entire cost pricing structure of the production area, which can be provided to downstream customers in a completely transparent process.

In addition to Product Strength, the fulfillment network, warehouse network system, and digitalization capabilities are also operated independently, with corresponding service systems, quotation systems, and access systems respectively. 

After the completion of this round of financing, Summer Farm will gradually develop upstream capabilities. On the one hand, it is to strengthen the management and control of production capacity. At this stage, Summer Farm has contracted many factory orders in the upstream, and the overall focus is still on management and control, but Yang Han said that they do not rule out building their own factories in the future. In addition, Summer Farm will also be involved in product development. It has patents such as "avocado ripening technology" and will invest more energy in food technology and food research and development in the next stage.