By Pete Olsen
White Pony Express recently welcomed a new food donation partnership with Imperfect Foods.
If you're not familiar with them, Imperfect Foods is a home-delivered produce and grocery subscription company that ships its customers a weekly box of healthy and delicious groceries for up to 30% less than the store. But they're much more than that. Like White Pony Express, they're out to change the world for the better.
They offer a tailored selection of fresh fruits and vegetables considered “ugly” because they were either the wrong size, not the perfect color, or had some other type of cosmetic blemishes that grocery stores prefer not to sell. Their customers are also able to purchase grocery staples like milk, eggs, cheese, and bread to their delivered boxes.
Fresh, nutritious offerings to their customers, like seasonal produce and dairy items, are basic needs for our recipients and adding Imperfect Foods to our Food Rescue partners means that we have more of what is in such short supply to those without enough to eat each day.
Here is a little history of Imperfect Foods and to show how mission-aligned they are with White Pony Express.
Ben Simon, Imperfect Foods CEO, noticed that a lot of food was going to waste in the cafeteria while he was attending the University of Maryland, so he decided to start the Food Recovery Network (FRN), a nonprofit dedicated to preventing waste on college campuses. Since its founding, the FRN has expanded to over 180 colleges and universities around the country. During his work with the FRN, Ben Simon met Ben Chesler and together they scaled the organization nationwide. The two Bens decided that together they could make an even bigger impact by sourcing “ugly" produce directly from farms and delivering it at a discount to customers' homes. They joined forces and founded Imperfect Produce in 2015, with the vision of showing the world the beauty in imperfection.
“By eating ‘ugly’, you're helping build a more sustainable and effective food system. You're helping fight food waste. You're ensuring farmers are rewarded for their full harvest with less wasted land, fossil fuels, and water. You're improving access to healthy food. You're creating fulfilling careers for employees. With every bite into a misshapen apple or crooked carrot, you're helping shape our world for the better."
In a world obsessed with perfection, we're here to show the beauty in imperfection. We're here to make a statement that our differences are what make us beautiful. We invite you to join our community and help us build a less wasteful world that's as beautiful as it is delicious!”
The Imperfect Foods management team has been extremely helpful in communicating with us by calling us when they have substantial amounts of donations for us to pick up at their hub in San Francisco. They have been more than happy to assist our drivers with selecting and loading their donated pallets of food for us while we are at their facility. They were thrilled to hear about our long list of recipients in the community that was receiving their donations; it seemed to really bring a smile to their faces.
Our food donors meeting a critical need in our community and we're thrilled to be partnering with Imperfect Foods at a time when the need to feed more and more people is great. Since beginning our partnership in July, we have recovered over 30,000 pounds of fresh, and nutritious food for our partner organization recipients and more is coming every week.
If you're an Imperfect Foods customer, be sure to thank them for their donations to White Pony Express. If you're not a customer, you might want to check them out. We love supporting those who also want to make the world a better place! #foodrescue #communitypartners