Hey, I hope you are having a good week. Still raining a lot here :(
Last week, seeing the confusion about the Twitter blue check, I decided to build something and try to catch the attention of those who don’t want to pay for it. What do you think?
😍 Spreading Love
“We rescued heaps of Lillibet apples (a whopping 70 tonnes) in the run up to June 2022 - all because there were "too many" after a supermarket cancelled its order.
The supermarket was worried the Lillibets (named after Queen Elizabeth Il) wouldn't sell, even though they'd requested our grower plant them - possibly for the Jubilee. So, rather than see the Lillibets potentially go to waste (and because we don't judge an apple by its colour), we were happy to give them a good home.“
“Summer 2022's extreme weather made things tricky for growers. The intense heat meant marrows grew much bigger than usual. This left them in a sticky situation, with many crops "too big" or "too odd" for supermarkets. We helped by rescuing around 29.5 tonnes of their mammoth marrows.”
🌰 Good business in a nutshell
Company - Oddbox
Problems
33% of food produced globally is wasted.
Up to 40% of fruits and vegetables are considered, by UK supermarkets, too ugly to be sold.
What they do - Sell boxes of ugly vegs and fruits that would go to waste.
How they started - Eating deliciously ugly tomatoes in Portugal, normally not seen in the UK, was the trigger. A trial in London with 10 people validated their assumption that people also wanted the ugly.
Areas of Impact - Food Waste, Climate Change
Impact Model - Boxes of odd fruits and vegetables are sold and 10% of profits go to fight food poverty.
25,000 tonnes of fruit and veg saved.
Around 1 million meals have been donated to charities.
Join the Cause - https://careers.oddbox.co.uk
Who started everything - Deepak Ravindran, Emilie Vanpoperinghe
“I quit to do something with purpose and to get my hands on a physical product,” — Deepak Ravindran