Misfits Market expands online grocery delivery to California

Delanco, N.J.-based Misfits Market — a direct-to-consumer online grocery platform focused on sustainability, affordability and accessibility — has launched in California, delivering to every zip code in the state.

The almost 40 million residents of the nation’s largest state now have access to organic produce, as well as other foods, at up to 40% off traditional brick-and-mortar grocery store prices, according to a news release.

“Since launching Misfits Market in 2018, we’ve had a vision to deliver a complete – and better – online grocery experience nationwide, and everything we’ve done up until this point has been in service to that, whether building our own in-house technology to support our food value supply chain or expanding our supplier relationships to bring more products to customers,” founder and CEO Abhi Ramesh said in the release.

After the company’s $225 million Series C-1 funding this September, Misfits Market has narrowed its focus on nationwide expansion and increasing the selection of items available to customers.

As for California, it’s a state with diversity in geography and income level, with one in five California residents reporting food insecurity and little access to quality and affordable groceries, according to the California Association of Food Banks. Misfits Market aims to solve lack of access to fresh, healthy food by eradicating food deserts in America by 2025. With the launch of all zip codes in California, the company now reaches 38,568 zip codes in the lower 48 states, according to the release.

Also, California is one of the largest producers of agriculture in the U.S., with more than one-third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts grown in the state, according to the state department of food and agriculture. At the same time, much of the food grown in this country is never harvested, for several reasons, but one is because it doesn’t meet traditional retail cosmetic standards, according to the news release.

To combat this disparity, Misfits Market has built a new food-value supply chain to help eliminate food waste by working directly with suppliers to source quality goods that may otherwise go to waste due to gaps in the existing supply chain.

Since Misfits Market was founded in 2018, the company has saved 225 million pounds of food, 70% of which would have been lost revenue for farmers and food producers, according to the release. Misfits Market has delivered $155 million as a new stream of “rescue revenue” to farmers and producers in less than three years while eliminating unnecessary food waste along the way.

Misfits Market partners with many California-based organic farmers, producers and sustainably minded suppliers that today’s food system leaves behind. Partners include: Jacobs Del Cabo, Homegrown Organics, Coke Farms, Misionero (Earth Greens), JAS Family Farms, 4earth, Liv Organic and Lakeside Organic Gardens.

“The amount of produce we throw away in California due to cosmetic reasons could feed the world, so we’ve been proud to eliminate millions of pounds of food waste annually in partnership with Misfits Market since we began supplying them almost three years ago,” Dick Peixoto, owner-grower of Lakeside Organic Gardens in Watsonville, Calif., said in the release.

The company has helped while the grower has battled challenges such as COVID-19, extreme weather, fires and labor shortages, he said. Misfits Market gives Peixoto a fair return on his company’s hard work, delivering their food that isn’t cosmetically marketable to traditional grocery stores directly to their customers’ kitchens.

As a promotion, for every order shipped to California during the month of November, Misfits Market will donate the monetary equivalent of one meal to Feeding America member food banks in California. Through that organization, $1 helps provide at least 10 meals secured by Feeding America on behalf of local member food banks.