Wonky Box is a fresh fruit and vegetable subscription service which delivers produce to consumers that would otherwise go to waste.
Produce which is an unusual size or shape, or has a slight blemish, often won't meet supermarkets or export standards but is perfectly good to eat.
So, rather than wasting the fruit and vegetables, Wonky Box collects the odd-looking and otherwise surplus produce from local growers, boxes it up, and delivers it straight to households in Wellington, Wairarapa, Manawatū and Auckland regions.
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Angus Simms and Katie Jackson, came up with the idea after working a summer on produce farms around Nelson.
They say they met the farmers who weren't able to sell their fruit and veg based on appearance - at a time when it was getting harder to eat healthy at an affordable price.
“Wonky to us essentially means it can be misshapen, can be a particular size, too small, too large, it can be a particular shape, it could be slightly curvy, for example, it might have a few battle scars, avocados get rubbed up in the wind against branches. So, as they develop, they grow and they have scarring on their outer skin, it doesn't of course affect in any way whatsoever the flesh underneath, taste or the nutritional value,” Simms says.
They also take surplus produce, he says.
“Produce that's not even necessarily ugly, but just has been has been grown.
“For example, hydroponic growers up in the North Island have grown their produce and at the moment they can't water their produce, there's nothing actually wrong with the size or shape, but to them to get it to a specific size then they're needing to water the produce and of course there are restrictions on water requirements right now in certain areas across the North Island which means that they can't feed their crops.
“So, we're taking produce like that as well off their hands.”
“When supermarkets or other big retailers create an order and they've just grown too much for that specific order, we'll take the surplus,” says Jackson.
Much of this perfectly good food, which isn’t diverted for animal feed, would be left to rot, Simms says.
“The reality is up to 40 percent of produce that's actually grown never leaves the farm.
“So, it doesn't matter how many buyers there are to actually process this produce, there's still plenty that is just thrown away, essentially.”
They say their model is viable because they have taken cost out of the supply chain.
“A lot of growers will contract to pack houses, they'll contract to wholesalers, wholesalers then pass it on to supermarkets and so on.
“We have removed a lot of the supply chain, which means that we're still able to give the grower a fair price for the produce that they've, put their backbone into growing, and of course, we're then able to turn it around very quickly and get it to our customers, at what we like to think as an affordable cost as well.”
Currently the business is North Island only they say, but they have plans for expansion.
“We want to be countrywide.”