This Company Sends Imperfect Fruits and Vegetables to Your Home

Nature doesn't always adhere to our arbitrary standards of fruit and veggie beauty. The asymmetrical foods you see here may look unusual, but they're still perfectly edible. Unfortunately, it's unlikely you'll find any at the grocery store, because they just don't sell. This desire for perfect fruit leads to billions of pounds of produce getting thrown out each year.

A startup called Imperfect wants to change the public's attitude towards crooked fruit. Created by entrepreneurs Ben Simon and Ben Chesler, the service sends fresh produce right to your door. All the fruit and veggies are ripe, delicious, and inexpensive—the only catch is that they look a little weird. A buyer can get 10-14 pounds of produce for only $12. 

"We get the product in large pallet-sized bins, like the bins you see in the supermarket filled with watermelons," Ron Clark, the director of sourcing at Imperfect, told TechInsider. "We get it for pennies on the dollar compared to market rate."

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The charming produce found in each box comes from farms all over California. Imperfect collects misshapen foods, as well as whatever happens to be in oversupply. It doesn't take a lot for a piece of fruit to get rejected: wind-damaged pears and sunburnt apples are often tossed aside. Still, every piece is as delicious as its prettier counterpart (and has so much more character). The service is currently only available in the Bay Area, but there are plans to expand. "We can ship [California produce] up to Seattle and as far east as Dallas for a small enough freight charge that the model very much works," said Ben Simon. "And there's so much produce going to waste in Florida, New York, states all around the country."[h/t: Tech Insider]