Thinking outside the food box a little bit is leading to some innovative and profitable food notions.
In France, a supermarket chain is selling 'Inglorious Fruit and Veggies' - lumpy, misshapen, ugly fruit and veggies that are sold at a 30% discount. This effort to combant food waste was a huge success: all stocks of the fruit and veggies sold out and the supermarket traffic increased by 24%.
Over $165 billion worth of food is thrown away in the US each year, mainly due to the perception of expiration dates, which typically have nothing to do with consumer safety. In Massachusetts, The Daily Table is an expired food market that will take food donations from other grocery stores and sell them to consumers at affordable prices.
In Germany, a group of entrepreneurs are opening the first package-free supermarket. Food will mostly be sourced from local supplier and will then be sold in bulk using gravity bins, which consumers will use to fill their own containers. This is an effort to decrease the 16 million tons of waste packaging produced by Germany each year.
