🍆 Good Business #12 • Oddbox

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?

“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.”

• 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.

• Saving the World

  • 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