Still undecided? Is the produce really that ugly? Does it taste different?
An Honest Imperfect Produce Review
Yes, try it. I know I am supposed to bury the lead or wait till the end of this blog for some big reveal. To be honest, the price-point is just so cheap! For 7-9lbs small box of produce, the first crate ends up costing about $8 after using the Imperfect Produce Coupon Code. A small fruit & veggie box starts at $13 + $4.99 shipping. With the $10 promo code, it's a steal!
The second reason is that buying from Imperfect Produce is something you can feel really good about. About 20% of perfectly-good produce never makes it grocery store shelves and instead ends up in a landfill or rotting in the fields. Instead of buying perfect apples in the store, you can support local farmers, save water and save food waste. WIN WIN WIN. Learn more about their sourcing here.
A quick warning: Even though I initially ordered a small produce box with my Imperfect Produce discount code, each box is customizable. Add beets, remove carrots, change the quantity of sweet potatoes, etc... I ended up ordering $30 worth of produce. So what cool finds did I add to my box? I was excited to see great prices on avocados, dates, butternut squash, pears and blueberries.
So what did the produce look like? Was it.... OK?
There are six main categories of what might be "wrong" with your Imperfect produce, so you have an idea of what to expect. Since I was a little nervous about ordering "damaged" food, I chose many items that were surplus items or odd sizes. My avocados, lemons, limes and butternut squash were too small, my sweet potatoes were too big. When you shop in the grocery store, you never quite think about these things. When my order of misshapen sweet potatoes arrived at my door - well - I didn't even know sweet potatoes could look like that! Most of the produce looked perfectly fine. I used my first order of dates to make bacon-wrapped dates for the 4th of July. No one at the party seemed to mind that they suffered from "minor sugaring on the dates."
On my second box order, I took a few more risks and was a little disappointed in my results. Some problems were minor! My pears and avocado had small scarring (brown lines grown into the skin from touching a tree branch or weather damage while growing) on the outside, but tasted just fine. Other items, such as my purple cabbage and carrots were bitter in taste and not anything I would re-box on my next order. Many of my whole carrots were also deeply cracked, causing them to be dry and hard to cut.
The Summary #TLDR
If you are thinking trying Imperfect Produce, try out a small box for $10 off. Some produce items in the marketplace are riskier than others. If you want to be on the safe side, order surplus items or items that have shape/size issues. Fruit scarring ended up being no big deal for me, but some of the damaged vegetables ended up tasting very bitter. Overall, this ended up being a great deal for me - and I now have more sweet potato in my pantry than I know what to do with.
*Delivery is currently available in Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, Portland, Seattle, Chicago and parts of Indianapolis.
*If you aren't following Imperfect Produce on Instagram, you are missing a company that is absolutely killing it with their Insta-game by just buying a Sharpie and a bag of googly eyes. #doingitforthegram