GoodGood, a new Toronto variety-store concept from one of the co-founders of food-pickup app Ritual, has raised $6.5 million in its first funding round, as it seeks to eventually roll out its ultra-fast home delivery services across the country.

The company, now valued at roughly $30 million, has been testing its services in recent weeks in downtown Toronto. It’s one of several firms promising rapid delivery times—some as quick as within 15 minutes—that’s starting to eye the Canadian market.

Instant delivery is a “very compelling category,” said Andre Charoo, founder and general partner at Maple VC. The firm, also a Ritual backer, participated in GoodGood’s round, as did several other firms and angel investors, including Farhan Thawar, Shopify’s vice-president of engineering. Charoo declined to disclose the size of Maple’s investment.

Charoo said his primary reason for investing came from his belief in co-founder Rob Kim, who helped found Ritual in 2014, but he was also swayed by the category’s momentum. “This market, in general, is massive,” he said. “I want to have a foot in the race here.”

While Amazon and other companies once raised eyebrows with promises of same-day delivery, a group of new startups has upped the ante with ever-faster delivery times across Europe, the U.S. and parts of the Americas, with Canada as a notable exception. These players have gobbled up venture capital dollars and expanded rapidly.

Consumer behaviour has shifted as DoorDash and its peers made online ordering and home delivery ubiquitous, and the spread of COVID-19 forced more people to shop online, said Charoo. The market for items that customers want delivered quickly has become larger than initially expected, he said, and venture-capital dollars follow really large markets. “If there is a category that is clearly creating new behaviours, it’s going to be worth a lot of money in the future, and so that’s going to attract a lot of venture capital.”

As of the second quarter of the year, Gopuff, a Philadelphia-based company promising “daily essentials delivered in minutes,” nabbed two of the three biggest deals among U.S. foodtech firms, according to PitchBook. It raised a US$1.15-billion round in March, valuing it at nearly US$9 billion, and a US$380-million round in September. Meanwhile, Jokr, a New York-based firm with a 15-minute delivery window, snagged the largest seed round, at nearly US$119 million in April. More recently, that company reached a US$1.2-billion valuation with a US$260-million round from investors that included Tiger Global.

“The foodtech industry continues to grow with remarkable speed fuelled by record funding,” reads PitchBook’s third-quarter foodtech report, noting “a continued push for on-demand everything” as a major trend, as well as the emergence of ultrafast solutions.

Earlier entrants in the grocery ecommerce space are now hustling to keep up. DoorDash announced Monday it would start offering deliveries within 15 minutes in one New York City neighbourhood, with more areas to come in the next few months. Instacart is reportedly planning to launch a 15-minute delivery pilot in parts of the U.S. next year.

“I think it all comes down to the convenience factor,” said GoodGood co-founder Kim. 

GoodGood offers a curated selection of snacks, including ready-to-bake cookies and coffee, as well as lifestyle items, like candle-wick trimmers and reusable water bottles. Customers can shop online—first via a website and later through an app that’s expected to launch in the first quarter of next year—and in store. 

The company’s first location, a temporary space in Toronto’s King West neighbourhood, opened Tuesday. The pop-up cafe will stay open until early summer and GoodGood plans to open five to 10 permanent locations, including some wine bars, in the city in the first half of next year, said Kim. It will then expand across the Greater Toronto Area in the second half of 2022 and later across Canada, likely next in Vancouver and Quebec. Ultra-fast delivery from the stores is a “huge” part of the business model, Kim said.

Investors’ reception to the company’s plan to bring ultra-fast delivery, with a brick-and-mortar component, to Canada was strong. Kim characterized the fundraising process as “very quick.”

GoodGood’s real estate strategy will differentiate it from competition that’s likely to enter Canada in the future, said Charoo. As the man who launched Uber in Canada, he noted many U.S.-based companies consider operating north of the border at some point in their trajectory.

That point, it turns out, may be soon. Jokr’s Canadian launch appears imminent. It recently posted for a Toronto-based launch manager to support its “Canadian launch from the very beginning.” The company was also recently hiring for a senior category manager to develop its product assortment, and a marketing and merchandising intern “that will help us launch and operate our service in Canada,” both out of Toronto. It did not respond to a request for comment. 

Meanwhile, Gopuff has also been looking to add staff in Toronto. It was searching for a senior launch-program manager based out of the city, though the posting did not explicitly mention Canadian operations. There are hints the role would include Canada, with responsibilities including site selection and maintaining “detailed project plans that span across multiple sites, territories and countries.” It was also searching for a district manager, responsible for the success of a particular unnamed geography, based in Toronto. “We don’t have anything to share on Canada,” wrote spokesperson Brigid Gorham in an emailed statement to The Logic, adding the company would share more “if/when that changes.”

Kim considers all the ultra-fast delivery companies GoodGood’s competitors, but believes his company’s real estate play will give it an upper hand. His competitors will one day look to include brick-and-mortar locations, he said, noting some already have started to open up retail stores.

Charoo agreed. “Once you have locations, that is a definitive sort of defensibility that is really hard to compete against once you have it,” he said. “So there’s a bit of a race, I would say, and I think GoodGood at least has a front-running position in that race.”

Editor’s note: Maple VC’s Andre Charoo said brick-and-mortar locations are a “defensibility” for ultra-fast delivery companies. An earlier version of this story used a different word.