Imperfect Produce is now in Philadelphia!

Imperfect Produce is a grocery delivery company that recovers ugly produce that would otherwise go to waste. They deliver customizable boxes directly to your door for about 30% less than grocery stores. They also offer recovered grocery items like lentils, quinoa, nut butters, olive oil, and bread. The good news is that they are finally available here in Philadelphia! I was so happy to check them out!

So let me get into my experience with Imperfect Produce. I placed an order with them for mostly recovered grocery items, and a few produce items. I placed the order about 2 weeks in advance because I was going to be out of town for a week. Due to the timeframe, on the week of my expected order Imperfect let me know that a few of the produce items I was requesting were no longer available. Their produce offerings change each week based on availability, due to most items being sourced locally. That being said, the team did a great job of notifying me via email, ahead of time, about what items were no longer available. They offered to substitute similar products instead, when necessary, which worked out great.

When my produce and grocery box arrived, everything honestly looked really fresh! Again, I primarily ordered grocery items, but all of them looked really good. Even the bread I ordered still had about a week before it'd reach it's "sell-by" date.

Through Imperfect, I was able to order items that are normally available at organic grocers, such as Whole Foods, in an extremely convenient way for a fraction of the cost. It's a service I would definitely recommend.

Other than the cost savings and convenience, there are other reasons why Imperfect is a great company to support. Prior to making my order, I was astounded by reading these statistics on their website: 20 billion pounds of produce goes to waste on farms every year, often because it's too "ugly" for grocery stores' strict cosmetic standard. 40% of all the food produced in the US goes uneaten. Growing food that goes to waste currently uses 21% of our freshwater, 19% of our fertilizer, and 18% of our cropland. In addition to all of that, the wasted food that goes to landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times as potent as CO2. Reducing food waste is one of the top three ways to reverse global warming, according to research by Project Drawdown. (All of these statistics and more like them can be found at ImperfectProduce.com/food-waste-101).

So all in all, it's great being able to reduce waste, save money, and help the environment by ordering Imperfect Produce. I will definitely be ordering from them again in the future!