This is not a sponsored post. There are no affiliate links. I am merely an American citizen who, like everyone else, needs to buy food every once and awhile to survive in a world turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic and my attitudes have changed a lot about my love affair with grocery shopping since my first pandemic food shopping adventure March 13th, 2020 (yes, Friday the 13th!!!). Imperfect Foods was not exactly on my mind as our grocery shopping needs had to be covered by multiple retailers when supplies were limited because they did not start operations in our area I believe until late last year. I was aware of the organization prior to the pandemic and I forgot to check on the status of their future openings due to the amount of stress I was under at the time until I received one of their mailers. We even kept it on the fridge while we thought about whether we’d want to give them a try.

That might sound weird but our adventures with reducing food waste and grocery costs has not always been great.

I tried Bountiful Baskets when we lived in Wyoming. While I loved saving on produce with Bountiful Baskets because things were oddly pretty much the same to buy at the local grocery store as what we had been spending in southern California, the delivery structure with BB was certainly a struggle. Since volunteers coordinate pulling items off the truck and distributing things in everyone’s grocery containers (usually laundry baskets) I found it hard to volunteer with a young child I had to bring with me. The other thing that bothered me was not having a say in the produce I received. It was simply discussed we should gift any item we did not want to someone who did. This works for the occasional piece of produce but on countless occasions I would receive spinach bundles that were incredibly difficult to rinse fully of dirt which is a big reason I tend to buy baby spinach leaves or frozen spinach instead. I sort of feared Imperfect Foods would be a slightly different take on Bountiful Baskets.

My fears were unfounded. The brand allows you to subscribe and skip weeks as needed. They will craft a cart based off of some initial selections you make, and you modify the cart from there to remove or increase quantities. You can indicate items you never or always want in your cart. As good as that all sounds, I am most happy with the fact I am not told to just suck it up if something ends up in my cart I don’t want, like the moldy shallot that accidentally ended up in one of my boxes. I emailed the customer care team right after the box was delivered, provided a snapshot of the item, tossed it in the trash, and waited for follow up. I received a generic confirmation email about my message but the next morning one of the team members responded and let me know I’d be credited for the purchase that went awry. Awesome.

The fact Imperfect Foods delivers is a godsend. Grocery shopping typically takes me about an hour and a half plus whatever amount of time it takes to get to and from the store(s). I love saving on my drive time and I am usually only spending an hour of my time now—mostly because I do linger on my purchasing decisions. I could probably grocery shop online in 30 minutes or less if I wanted to be decisive from the get go. As parents still coping with virtual learning it’s just great that we can recoup some leisure time during our week. Thirty or so minutes might not sound like much but I’ve lost about five or so hours of personal quiet time in my week; those thirty minutes mean a lot to me. The delivery also reduces the amount of plastic waste we introduce into our home and then back into the environment.

I bought a little too much produce the first week. The only thing that ended up going to waste the first week though was the jalapeños, our fault not the company’s. We tried to air fry them and cooked them a little too long. I am also not used to buying fresh coconut so I lost a good portion of the coconut chunks when I opened the package again this week and saw they did not look good. Next time, I’ll just purchase this with a recipe in mind.

The strawberries have been one of our best purchases with Imperfect Foods. Normally, a container of strawberries from a local store might last 3-4 days before they start to spoil on us. I actually kept forgetting to get back to our second container of strawberries from Imperfect Foods, not eating them until we already had them in the fridge for a week. We only lost a few that were starting to soften too much for our preferences and due to the fact I no longer have a blender, I decided not to freeze them.

When we made the choice to start cutting back on traditional grocery shopping, I was a bit worried about what I would miss with grocery shopping: the discovery of new products. A month is too small a case study to say Imperfect Foods will always have a new product for me to try out but as you can see, I was able to find a variety of things some of us likely cannot find at a Fry’s, Trader Joe’s, Costco, or Sprouts. Sure some are a bit more pricey. I was not looking for deals in those areas when I started investigating Imperfect Foods but rather looking to find more affordable produce without having to go to H Mart as often which has some of the best produce prices I’ve found locally. I do love H Mart but it is out of the way for us and I’d like to go there when I know we need bulk items like rice.

This is where it is important to talk about us being more strategic with grocery shopping. I had to give up wandering a bit more. When I wander, I spend more and when I spend more, I reduce our Hawaii budget. Not good. My goal this past month has been to roughly spend $118.75 per week on grocery items. I certainly did not end up with a perfect month. I forgot we needed to order more coffee and I did cave in to our daughter wanting Girl Scout cookies to support her best friend. My estimate on what our Valentine’s Day dinner and dessert ingredients would cost was wrong due to not finding smaller portions of the meat for our Outlander Kitchen bridies. And for anyone judging me for hitting up Whole Foods that has been dubbed “Whole Paycheck” by some people, please keep walking by. We picked up some things that span this month and the next–like my vegan chocolate cake I cannot wait to dig into on Monday!

I knew ahead of time a budget this lean was a huge trial and error endeavor. We’ve upped our intake of sparkling water as we’ve chosen to reduce alcohol consumption and I’ve never been a big soda fan. The water we normally pick up as opposed to the Liquid Death is below $4 for a total of 12 cans (12 oz. each), cheaper than the beers we would previously purchase around this time of year. The Liquid Death water costs $14.99 for a 12 pack (16.9 oz each). It will be a learning process to figure out how much sparkling water we like to keep on hand. Working from home, we’ve also increased our coffee intake. Purchasing directly from Stumpton is cheaper than buying smaller bags where we can find them and in a few months I’ll figure out how far the 5lb. bags actually take us.

While I’ve chosen mostly to outline personal benefits of trimming back our food budget, it is important to recognize there are a lot of larger benefits to an organization like Imperfect Foods. The concept of reducing food waste is a great cause on its own and Imperfect Foods is holding itself to treating its workers better than what we see currently with some large brand grocers. A quick look at their website and there are some transparent numbers. A customer care associate in Tucson, Arizona has a starting pay of $15 an hour whereas the employees who deliver groceries to people’s homes show between $17-$22 an hour based on locality and warehouse associates are $15 to $17 an hour. Fry’s Food is one of the brands under Kroger and it is hard as a working parent to just forgo dropping by one of the most convenient food retailers, but you can go to Kroger’s website and see the grocery clerk and retail clerk postings are not transparent about pay per hour, even a range based on experience. The Kroger brand is also making a poor impression on me due to their choice to close stores over additional pay. To take some of my purchasing power away from supporting them to support a better organization is an added bonus to reducing food waste and trimming my food budget. I also appreciate the food delivery/set up as an option for our most vulnerable. Imperfect Foods is not set up for EBT at this time but the company offers reduced food boxes (Yeah!!) to those that need them and I feel the delivery is all around a great option. Not everyone has access to a vehicle, is medically able to drive, and/or has the mobility to make it around a grocery store, even those that offer some scooter carts.

It’s been a great personal challenge for me this month to check out the company and whether you agree or disagree with me on the brand and its competitors, I welcome honest and respectful feedback. Again, just keep in mind, I received no compensation for my thoughts. I heard good things about the company and went out on a limb to try them as my primary grocery store for the month and it meet/exceeded some expectations that I will continue using them as our primary store unless other things arise that change my opinion.

-Cheryl