Giving Ugly Produce A Fresh Start

Even a weird-looking carrot can be good in soup.

When you walk into the grocery store, you will see rows and rows of beautiful produce. Every strawberry is perfectly shaped and packaged, apples are bright red and shiny, and the lettuce and cabbage are green, crisp, and just a little wet. But have you ever stopped and wondered why all of the produce looks so pretty? Where does all the imperfect produce go?

In case this realization is new to you, nature doesn’t produce only beautiful things. Some of the fruit and vegetables are less than perfect, dull, and maybe even twisted or warped. But where does it go if it doesn’t get the chance to grace the supermarket shelves?

Depending on the type of fruit or vegetable, a lot of the unwanted produce will be made into some sort of byproduct- applesauce, tomato paste, or even some sort of juice. But recently, startups have taken the idea of less-than-perfect produce and turned it into big business that not only brings savings to you and your family but also combats food waste.

Each year over over 10 million tons of cauliflower is wasted or goes unsold simply because it has a cosmetic defect. This defect could be something as simple as a slightly “too yellow” appearance, or it could even just not look like a perfect photo cauliflower. Enter “Imperfect Produce.”

Imperfect Produce is a produce company founded on the idea of its simple namesake. Benjamin Chesler, founder of Imperfect Produce, take grocery store rejects and sells them at discounted prices to the consumers. Customers will get a grocery box subscription with fresh defects to their house, every month. The boxes can include fruits and vegetables of all types, a lot of which correspond to the current season. The best part, Imperfect Produce has already saved 80 million pounds of food so far, since it’s inception in 2015.