Were you aware that nearly 30 to 40 percent of edible produce is turned away from supermarkets because of exacting aesthetic standards? Neither did Deepak Ravindran and his wife Emilie Vanpoperinghe, founders of OddBox and Graduates of the London Founder Institute.
They discovered the waste in the grocery industry when they were vacationing in Portugal. They were eating delicious tomatoes that were oddly shaped and a little bit wonky. The couple wondered why the tomatoes tasted so much better but looked stranger than their typical produce selection in London. When they returned home the learned a lot more about the loss and waste in the grocery industry. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization around 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted or lost every single year globally. The United Kingdom alone sends 90,000 tons of produce to landfills annually but this food is never recorded as waste since it is rejected before it hits the supermarket shelves.
Deepak Ravindran and his wife saw an opportunity in this waste to save more food and to give consumers more of a choice when it comes to the produce that is available to them. Ravindran said, "Supermarkets everywhere said it was a supply and demand equation and they sell what people want to buy. But, customers say they don’t have a choice, while growers say they do what supermarkets ask them."
He believed that consumers would be happy to buy the produce that was rejected from supermarkets so in 2016 he began an experiment and thus Oddbox was born. In May of 2016, Ravindran bought rejected fruit and vegetables from local suppliers and created food boxes consisting of this produce. For the next six weeks he delivered his boxes once a week to twenty local households in his area. The results were promising. People loved the produce. This initial experiment was so successful and gave Ravidran and Vanpoperinghe so much confidence in the idea that they decided to pool their savings together and go into business.
It has been 18 months since the two decided to pool their money and begin Oddbox and already the company has 22 different suppliers and over 300 households signed up for their service. There are also offices in London that have signed up to receive produce boxes from Oddbox. Business has been going so well in fact that Ravindran decided to quit his high-paying job at Deutsche Bank to run Oddbox in a full-time capacity.
Currently, Oddbox offers customers produce boxes that come in six different sizes starting for as low as 8.49. Although, the boxes themselves are not completely customizable if a customer does not like a certain type of fruit or vegetable they can opt-out of having those items in their boxes. For example, Vanpoperinghe says that a number of customers have opted out of receiving under-sized onions in their boxes. The most popular produce currently for the company is broccoli, kale, and sweet potatoes. However, not all of the produce included in the boxes is misshapen. Sometimes the item is too big or small or just has a weird color to it. Also, if there is a glut in the market, like an excess of plums for example, they may have more plums in their boxes for a while until the market returns to normal.
In a year on the job, Ravindran says that Oddbox is making a profit. The profit margin is still small according to him, but they are making money. Oddbox is seeking investment to gain more suppliers and to broaden their delivery abilities. Ravindran says Oddbox is not about taking over the world but about growing sustainably as a company.
