A sustainability-focused produce delivery service is expanding operations to Barrie, Ont., looking to reduce food waste and the high price of groceries.
Odd Bunch, a company started in London, Ont., a year ago, officially expanded operations to the Barrie area Thursday.
The company’s mission is to reduce food waste by purchasing produce from local farmers that would otherwise end up in landfills because of how it looks. The practice also saves customers money over what they would pay at a grocery store.
“So anything that doesn’t necessarily look pretty enough can get turned down by major grocers, and that’s precisely what we aim to negate with our models,” says Divyansh Ojha, 24, the company’s founder and CEO.
“We work with farms, greenhouses and other distributors to source that, package it into boxes and deliver it to the customer’s door or up to 50 per cent cheaper than what they could find at retailers.”
Ojha tells Global News it was “unsettling” to learn about how much food goes to waste each year solely because of how it looks, prompting him to want to make a change.
“We’re not too far from some of the largest sources of produce in the country. So it was fairly easy to reach out and speak to some of these people, some of these growers, farmers that experience there is a problem firsthand,” he says.
“It became very evident to me that, yes, this something is broken here, and hopefully, we can try and, if not completely eradicate the issue or at least come up with a solution so that we don’t necessarily have to waste so much or spend so much for quality, which is very much comparable.”
Since starting, the company estimates it has diverted at least 10 million pounds of food from landfills.
Because they are purchasing products that would otherwise have gone to waste, they can buy them at a discount which they can then pass on to the consumer. Ojha estimates their food cost anywhere from 30 to 50 per cent less than grocery stores on any given week.
In the last year, the Barrie Food Bank reported a 77 per cent increase in the number of individuals receiving food support, with 5,200 people helped in March alone.
Ojha notes the program is also good for local farmers who struggle to sell products that do not meet the cosmetic standards of most retailers.
On average, the company estimates nearly 60 per cent of farm-grown produce is wasted.
“They’re able to turn a profit from something which was otherwise largely loss-leading, and in the economy that we’re currently in where every small business is trying to squeeze every last dollar and try to stretch it as far as it can go, it is a bit of a lifesaver,” Ojha says.
“The feedback that we’ve gotten is that it really has made an impact, especially (fore) the smaller scale farms, it’s definitely made an impact on their day-to-day.”
Before coming to Barrie, the London company expanded to Toronto, Hamilton and Montreal.
Ojha says they will be servicing communities south of Barrie, including Innisfil, Newmarket and Aurora, as well as most areas within a 20-minute drive of the city.
Odd Bunch sells its different-sized food boxes weekly and does not require users to sign up for a subscription.
More details are available on the company’s website.