Who determines whether produce is “ugly?” 

Basically, all supermarkets have kind of their grading system that in turn has been passed on to produce growers. They rank them according to their appearance. The first group are generally perfectly symmetrically, evenly colored. Size is a big thing in “pretty” or “ugly” produce that people don’t know about. When you’re going to the fields and your picking let’s say eggplant or apples, it has to be a certain kind of dimension for it to meet supermarket spec. Anything bigger or smaller than that will often get marginalized and end up going to waste.

What role do the supermarkets play in this? Are they part of the problem and solution?

The interesting thing about food waste is you can kind of say that about all of us. Food waste is an enormous problem and everybody has a role in it–I think supermarkets are kind of trapped in some of the rigid trappings of a capitalist society. When the main criteria is just uniformity and presenting things that all look the same, if that’s your number one criteria, not health, not nutrition, not waste, then you’re going to act in a way that promotes beautiful display cases that sell a lot but not necessarily a food system that’s less wasteful. It’s hard to ask a supermarket to be responsible for the whole food system.

How much can we help out the environment by eating “ugly” produce? 

I think they can help the environment a lot. What’s easy to forget about is when we waste food, we waste more than just food, right. We’re wasting all of the water that went into growing it. We’re wasting the fossil fuel that went into irrigating the field and transporting your produce and refrigerating your produce and storing your produce…If you care about sustainable agriculture, climate change, helping out your community, helping food and security initiatives, food waste is such a wonderful place to start because so many other positive things happen once we start wasting less food.

Is there a culinary benefit to using “ugly” produce? 

In terms of health and nutrition and flavor and how it performs in the kitchen, it’s exactly the same. I will say they might like it better just because it’s cheaper. Our produce is 30 to 50% cheaper than grocery store prices.

What’s the next step? 

Home delivery is our main focus as a business. We’re very much about getting ugly produce from the farms to people’s doors. We’re looking at expanding to San Diego in the near term, continuing to grow in the Bay Area. The Pacific Northwest is on the radar. We’re launching in Portland, Oregon in August, which is super exciting. From there, it’s a question of what other metro cities would want Imperfect.

Are you the only ones doing this on such a large scale here in the states? How does it feel to be a leader in this movement?

This is definitely a newer space in the food industry. Some supermarkets have adopted ugly or misfit initiatives. We are a leader and early mover and early adopter in the space. Honestly, it’s really exciting. The feedback we get from our community every day is so overwhelmingly positive.

What’s the weirdest piece of produce you’ve seen? 

Well, we did find a bell pepper in our warehouse once that looked a lot like Donald Trump, which was pretty funny. You have to go through so many bell peppers to find one that look like anybody, let alone our current president.