Across Canada, consumers are increasingly using these services to reduce their grocery bill, with over 100,000 Canadians using Odd Bunch. A box of vegetables and fruit from Odd Bunch on April 17.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
It can be tough to eat well when you’re watching every dollar you spend, but Maya Mendell, Maddie Henderson and the third roommate in their household are getting a range of fresh fruits and vegetables delivered to their door every week for just $23.
They’re able to get rock-bottom pricing by using Odd Bunch, a produce delivery service that buys misfit produce that grocery stores reject and sells for a discount. Ms. Mendell and Ms. Henderson buy a small mixed box from Odd Bunch each week to share at their home in Toronto.
Last month, for example, a small mixed Odd Bunch box listed on the website contained 11 small oranges, two red peppers, two cobs of corn, two zucchini, three apples, a pint of cherry tomatoes, a small watermelon, two pears, 13 potatoes and a rutabaga – all of which were either off-size, disfigured, damaged, had a fault with the packaging or were imperfect in some way, according to grocery-store standards.
“We go through it every single week and it‘s essentially our produce shop for the week,” Ms. Henderson said. “We rarely buy other produce unless we want something very specific.”
Other companies are catering to this market, too. In Southern Ontario, Eat Impact sells grocery-store rejects, while Too Good to Go operates in Europe, North America and Australia, selling surplus food from restaurants and stores that would otherwise go to waste.
Across Canada, consumers are increasingly using these services to reduce their grocery bill, with over 100,000 Canadians using Odd Bunch, and Too Good to Go expanding from its operations in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver to cities across the country, including Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Quebec City and Halifax.
To see if the misfit produce was the bargain it was hyped up to be, I ordered a box from each company. Here is what I learned.
Quality
What surprised me most about my misfit produce from Odd Bunch and Eat Impact was that none of it looked odd. When signing up for a service like this, I was expecting to get a gnarled pepper or a convoluted cucumber.
Potatoes and oranges from Odd Bunch, a produce delivery service that buys misfit produce that grocery stores reject and sells for a discount.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
“It just goes to show that the end consumer typically doesn’t have nearly as strict of a cosmetic lens as what perhaps some retailers and food inspection agencies,” said Divy Ojha, founder and CEO of London, Ont.-based Odd Bunch.
The produce from Odd Bunch and Eat Impact was very fresh. Both companies are supplied directly from farms and distributors to send to consumers.
Too Good to Go sells food from grocery stores that would be discarded because of policies that unsold items should be tossed after a certain number of days, even if it is still good to eat, explained Andrea Li, country director at Too Good to Go. She said they instruct stores “not to sell food that they otherwise wouldn’t be proud to sell at full price.”
Surplus produce is put into a surprise bag and listed on the Too Good to Go app at a discount for users to pick up at the stores.
When I received the Too Good to Go box, the majority of the produce looked good, but needed to be eaten within the next day or two. One orange was mouldy, and there was a bag of cherry tomatoes which smelled rancid and a very soft tomato that I threw out. However, I had green grapes, bananas and oranges to eat for the entire week.
Too Good to Go says that they monitor feedback from the stores to ensure they only include high-quality food and produce in the surprise bags.
“If we see consistent low ratings or feedback of food that is not safe to eat, we will pull the store from the app,” Sarah Soteroff, senior public relations manager at Too Good to Go, wrote in an e-mail. “We are always working with the partners to train and re-train, but do know that some food (especially produce) may be missed during quality checks. ”
Cost
For Odd Bunch and Eat Impact, I paid $23.99 and $27.54, respectively, for a small box. To build the same boxes on Instacart, which sells food at regular supermarket prices, would have cost me about $45 each.
Mr. Ojha explains that Odd Bunch is able to give customers a good deal because they buy food from retailers based on what those retailers want to sell, rather than what consumers want. For example, if a farm is looking to get rid of cucumbers one week, Odd Bunch may be able to buy them for around 40 to 50 cents on the dollar.
Odd Bunch offers a small box of produce for $23.99.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Eat Impact is modelled similarly to be “lean and sustainable,” said founder and CEO Anna Stegink. Eat Impact and Odd Bunch said they can be precise about how much food they need with almost no waste by ordering produce from distributors only after customers have placed their orders.
I bought my Too Good to Go box for $6.99, which the app tells me would have cost $20.99 at regular price at the store, saving me almost 70 per cent.
While Odd Bunch and Eat Impact bypass the grocery store and offer delivery, Too Good to Go surprise bags sell food at a later stage in the supply chain and require customers to pick it up themselves, making it less fresh and convenient, but also considerably cheaper.
“Our competitor is the bin,” Ms. Li said. This service allows businesses to reclaim some revenue that would otherwise go in the garbage.
Kelsi Tsatouhas uses Too Good to Go to get discounted produce at an organic grocery store in Vancouver. She said that occasionally she has to throw some things out, but it‘s worth it for the price.
“If I don’t eat even half the stuff, I’ve got my money’s worth,” she said. “But then we end up eating pretty much all the food in there anyway.”
Convenience
Eat Impact and Odd Bunch were the most convenient, as they delivered to my apartment building. For Too Good to Go, I travelled about 40 minutes across Toronto using public transit to get the closest grocery box available.
The most challenging part of buying these boxes was not being able to plan recipes for the week because I didn’t know what would be in them. Further, when they did arrive, there were some items I would normally never buy.
While Ms. Mendell and Ms. Henderson also get produce that they wouldn’t buy themselves at the store, they said using Odd Bunch has encouraged them to experiment with different recipes.
“Part of the reason we haven’t stopped it is because there’s nothing wrong with the produce,” Ms. Mendell said.
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