BenSimonOfficial

Great question! Easy sells for us are definitely fresh seasonal fruit like citrus, kiwis, and persimmons. We also see a lot of demand for healthy greens like kale, broccoli, and lettuces, which are normally expensive in stores so people love the savings plus the convenience of having it delivered. Hard sells are anything with visible scarring, which can look weird at first, but once you peel or chop the item you realize that it's the same as what you could have gotten in the stores. To be honest though, one of the most common responses we get from people when they first get their box is "this isn't ugly at all!" It is astounding how strict the cosmetic standards at grocery store standards have become over the years.

You're right -- a lot of ugly veggies have a processor market. Apples, oranges, and other fruit tend to. Often even when there is a processor market, farmers are forced to sell it below cost. So we buy some of that stuff and are able to pay a lot more than processors do. But most items -- basically all the field packed product like celery, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. don't have a processor market and would be left in the field. And then even items like kiwis, eggplants or any other pears besides the bartlett often go to animal feed for 1 cent per pound.

Long term we definitely want to serve more B2B customers like that -- especially schools. Right now, we're starting off with home delivery. Mainly, we've just seen a big gap in the grocery home delivery space where most of the big players are serving the top 1% or 10% of income levels with a premium offering, so between the good price and the story/impact of it people have really got on board. And yeah, just about all of it comes straight from farms.

We have a bulk buying program with a few local customers like UC Berkeley Co-ops and a company called "Ugly Juice" that makes juice out of leftovers. We don't actually sell that much to restaurants, tho. The supply chain we've created takes a few days to get it to us so it's a little tough to meet the demands of chefs who want to be able to order the night before and with a huge selection of products.

Awesome! SD should actually be sooner rather than later. We are planning on launching in LA in late January/early February and should launch in SD by April or May. You can sign up on our website ahead of time so you're all set up when we launch if you want.