U.S. retail giant Whole Foods has announced an agreement with Northern California home delivery service Imperfect Produce to begin selling 'ugly' fruits and vegetables beginning in April.

Whole Foods will start testing sales of the less attractive produce in a few of its stores in Northern California.

The move comes amid debate over the market's tailoring of so-called good-looking fruits and vegetables, rather than simply concentrating on the nutrients, health benefits and value of eating fresh produce.

Ben Simon

According to Imperfect Produce chief executive officer Ben Simon, the type of produce and prices that will be offered are not yet being released.

In conversation with www.freshfruitportal.com, Simon discussed the company's first experience selling ugly produce at West Coast food retailer Raley's last year, and the lessons learned.

"This was the first time ugly produce was introduced mainstream to U.S. consumers in a major grocery store chain and the goal of the pilot was to learn as much as possible. One crucial finding was that there was an incremental increase in sales," he said.

"This is a really important finding because a lot of retailers are concerned that this would cannibalize their premium product sales and lead to less revenue. In the Raley's pilot we found it led to more overall revenue on the items we were selling which was important.

"We also found that this is something consumers are ready for and buzzing about, and it gave us some new ideas about how the product and branding should feel."

A similar response was seen in France's recent Inglorious fruits and vegetables campaign which promoted the sale of ugly fruit by local supermarket chain Intermarche. Sales were boosted and several competitors have since launched their own versions of the promotion.

However, if consumers were turned off by the unattractive fruit and the campaign proved unsuccessful, Imperfect Produce would return to its growing fruit delivery business.

"Imperfect's core business right now is a home delivery model in the Bay Area. We began in August and already have 2,700 customers to our subscription service.

That business continues to grow by several hundred customers in place and we are constantly getting requests from customers in new cities. So, hypothetically if the pilot with Whole Foods didn't work out we would continue to supply our growing customer base through home delivery."

However, based on the success of the Intermarche campaign, these ugly fruits are likely to become a star product.

Food waste

The company has also made strides to mitigate food waste.

"20% of the produce grown on farms never makes it to a human mouth, in large part because it is simply the wrong shape, size, or color," Imperfect said in a company blog.

"Every year six billion pounds of fruits and vegetables go to waste on farms across the U.S. just for looking a little different from other produce.  Instead of going to feed people, all that wasted produce is sitting in landfills, where it releases methane gas into the atmosphere.

"So we came up with the idea to reduce this food waste while making produce more affordable for all families. We've teamed up on this project with Ron Clark, who has worked for the California Association of Food Banks for the last 15 years sourcing ugly produce to keep it from going to waste."

The food waste polemic has recently gained momentum abroad, with French politician Arash Derambarsh calling on U.S. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and EU President Jean-Claude Juncker to follow in France'’s footsteps to change the laws and put an end to the food waste scandal ‘once and for all’.

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