Crooked-neck parsnips with wickedly long whiskers. Double-jointed carrots and knobby spuds. These fruits and veggies never make it to the catwalk of the supermarkets.
Misshapen with skin blemishes, most of these ugly ducklings end up in landfills or go to food banks.
San Francisco-based Imperfect Produce is betting that environmentally focused people will want to buy them, too. It delivers to doorsteps in California; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle. And it has plans to expand, just starting service in Chicago and expanding to more California communities.
The October launch in Seattle was so successful that it had to start a waiting list and expand its delivery partners.
"We were super happy with that response, surprised in the best possible way, said Ben Simon, CEO of Imperfect Produce. "As soon as we saw the demand was that high, a week before the launch … we had to go on a hiring spree."
In 2010, the last count, the nation wasted 131 billion pounds of food, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. That raised concerns about wasted water, fossil fuels, fertilizer, labor and farmland.
In targeting Seattle, Imperfect Produce believed the food-waste problem would resonate in a city with composting and recycling laws.
While the company claims that its ugly produce is 30 to 50 percent cheaper than supermarket prices, that's not its main sales pitch. It preaches that buying rejected produce saves the environment, such as keeping wasted food from rotting in landfills, which creates greenhouse gas.
