Last year I saw Plant-Based Brotha do an unboxing from a company called Imperfect Foods.
His haul looked great, so I checked out the company’s site and was drawn in by its mission to reduce food waste in the U.S.
“FACT: 20 billion pounds of fruits and veggies go to waste on farms every year, oftentimes because they don’t live up to the cosmetic standards of grocery stores.””
Even though I was interested in trying Imperfect Foods, I didn’t place an order because the service wasn’t available in the DC area yet.
This changed a couple of weeks ago when I saw an ad on my Instagram feed for Imperfect Foods and placed my first order.
Here’s a short video of me opening my first box…
Recap of my experience:
*I ordered a small box and paid $13 (including shipping) for a variety of produce - check out the video to see everything I got. They offer mixed (fruit & veggie) boxes, fruit only and vegetable only boxes. Since this was my first box, I did save about $6 on my order.
*I customized my box with organic and conventional produce to fit my meal plan for the week and paid about 30% less than the grocery store on “ugly” produce. I’m so glad they allow you to customize your order, because I didn’t want to receive a lot of stuff I wouldn’t eat (which is counterproductive if the purpose of the service is to avoid the trashcan). As you can see in the video and pictures, nothing about these produce are ugly.
*I loved that I received a text message when my driver was in route to drop off my delivery. It even included a map to track the driver.
Overall, this was a dope experience! They have an option to set up weekly or biweekly auto deliveries.
I plan to use the biweekly option going forward.
Of course, you can skip boxes and cancel at any time too.
I know Imperfect Foods isn’t available everywhere yet, but have you used them, or a similar service?
P.S. When I posted about Imperfect Produce on Instagram and used the #cookingugly hashtag, they donated 5 lbs of produce to a local food bank. :-)
