Although badly shaped or ugly apples, carrots or lemons are just as flavourful, they are normally not sold in supermarkets. Growers throw such fruits and vegetables away, because they do not meet the demanded aesthetic standards and shops do not accept them because they are afraid that customers will not buy them. In the world, every year, hundreds of millions of tonnes of visually imperfect fruit and vegetables are thus discarded.
The supermarket Intermarche, France's third largest retail chain, came up with the idea of preventing such food waste. It created a special department called "Inglorious Fruits and vegetables" in which ugly fruits and vegetables are sold for about 30% cheaper prices. Intermarche created a separate brand with its own logo, labels and its own advertising campaigns.
Anaesthetic fruits and vegetables also started being used to produce soups and juices sold in containers labelled as "from ugly oranges", and with this, Intermarche scored an instant success. These products may be 30% cheaper, but the taste is just as good.
"During the first two days, the store sold an average of 1.2 tonnes of ugly fruit and vegetables. The total number of customers in the store increased by 24%," says Intermarche in the promo video.
Ugly fruit and vegetables during the first month of sales bought over thirteen million customers and this was widely praised in the French media. Intermarche launched this campaign, among other reasons, as part of European Union's declaration of 2014 as the year to fight against food waste.