The price of organic food Thrive Market is 50% lower than that of traditional grocery store.

A group of investors are said to be betting on a start-up food company with a somewhat ambitious goal of becoming an "online Costco".

It is Thrive Market, an online provider of health food. Yesterday, the company announced the completion of $111 million in financing. This round of financing is led by Invus, a veteran equity investment firm, followed by venture capital firms Greycroft Partners, E-Ventures and CrossCulture Ventures. As part of the financing agreement, two Invus executives will join Thrive Market. The company said the money will mainly be used to develop its own brand goods and increase media marketing efforts.

Thrive, founded by a group of entrepreneurs three years ago, is one of the few startups to adopt a membership model. The company claims that users can buy organic food at a lower price (50% or less of the standard retail price) than traditional grocery stores, such as the American health food chain Whole Foods, for as little as $60 a year. Their goal is simple: to enable more consumers to buy what the founders call "better food."

"We just want every American family to enjoy a healthy lifestyle without spending a lot of money," Thrive co-founder Nick Green said in an interview. In addition, the demand for natural foods has made the market very large. "

According to Nick, the initial start-up idea did not mention investor enthusiasm at all, and was rejected by most investment institutions, and only co-founder Gunnar Lovelace participated in Thrive's seed wheel investment. However, they have been affirmed by a large number of supporters on the Internet. The success of crowdfunding has attracted the attention of some VC, such as Greycroft, which later participated in Thrive financing.

So far, the company says it has 5 million registered users, more than 300000 paying members and more than $20, 000 worth of goods shipped every day. The company also said that although it is only a few years old, it is expected to exceed $120 million in annual revenue.

It is worth mentioning that Thrive Market also included a philanthropic element in its creation process: while each membership was sold, Thrive also accepted a low-income family as its paying member. In fact, this plan has a lot to do with Lovelace's childhood: growing up in poverty and living only with his mother, he hopes to improve the lives of more people through Thrive.

"We are indeed a profit-oriented business," Lovelace stressed, "but we also want to be proud of our growing social benefits."

As news of the financing was released, Thrive announced that it would apply to the USDA to allow users to use food vouchers online (free or cheap food stamps given by the government to the unemployed). Lovelace revealed that Thrive has been negotiating with the Ministry of Agriculture on this issue for more than a year and a half, but still has not made any progress. But he said: "the voice of the public is very high, and the Ministry of Agriculture will certainly agree to our proposal eventually, but we just hope that the result will come soon."