Thrive Market Expands Its ‘Digital Whole Foods’ Onto Android

An online-only grocery store has expanded its potential base of health food shoppers.

TechCrunch reports that, yesterday (April 6), Thrive Market launched a version of its app — previously only available on iOS — for the Android platform.

The expansion of Thrive Market’s user base, posits the outlet, is a further signifier that business for the exclusively digital organic grocery retailer, which launched in late 2014, is on a decidedly upward trajectory.

Having been previously described by Cofounder and Co-CEO Nick Green as offering “Whole Foods-type products at Costco-like prices,” Thrive Market — which, to the latter comparison, operates on a subscription model (whereby members pay a $60 annual fee for access to the online shop) — attests to have more than 200,000 paying members, reports TechCrunch, as well as to have achieved a $100 million run rate after 14 months of existence and come close to $10 million in sales last month.

That the Los Angeles-based Thrive Market is now accessible by Android users not only creates for the site a potential revenue increase from subscription fees and sales of its private-label offerings, it also provides a lift for the digital grocer’s ongoing altruistic efforts.

Through its “Thrive Gives” program, shares TechCrunch, for every paid subscriber that Thrive Market brings on board, the company donates a free membership to a low-income family. As it so happens, a majority (51 percent) of those families are Android users — for whom there will now potentially be more low-cost health food options (with Thrive Market’s prices being 25–50 percent off retail) to go around.

To date, adds the outlet, Thrive Market has raised $58 million.