Misfits Market, the grocery delivery company focused on sustainable sourcing and reducing food waste, has announced its expansion into California, where it will deliver to all ZIP codes in the nation’s most populous state. Misfits Market offers a wide range of food, including produce, meats and seafood and its newly launched dairy category, for up to 40% off grocery store prices.
The move into California comes on the heels of Misfits Market’s $225 million Series C funding, which it acquired in September, less than six months after securing unicorn status. After adding California and its 1,700-plus ZIP codes, the company now serves 38,568 ZIP codes across 44 of the lower 48 states and the District of Columbia.
“We expect California to be one of our biggest states for delivery, not just in terms of its large population, but also because people in California are more open to online grocery shopping experiences and big consumers of organic produce, allowing us to rescue even more food that might otherwise have gone to waste,” Chief Strategy Officer Kai Selterman told Modern Shipper.
According to the California Association of Food Banks, one in five Californians, for a total of 8 million people, report food insecurity with little access to quality and affordable groceries. That figure can vary widely by county and city, but Misfits Market will have a presence in all of them, sourcing food from local farmers including Homegrown Organics, Jacobs Del Cabo, JAS Family Farms and Misionero and shipping orders to California ZIP codes out of its Salt Lake City fulfillment center, which acts as its hub for Western states.
“California is one of the United States’ largest producers of agriculture, with over one-third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts grown in the state. There’s a huge surplus of food available in the state, but grocers are lacking an operational infrastructure to offer access to everyone at value,” Selterman said. “To combat this, we have built an entirely new food value supply chain that helps eliminate food waste by working directly with these suppliers to source quality goods, offering our customers convenient access to grocery items at affordable prices.”
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To get a Misfits Market box in California, customers can create an account on the company’s website, build their orders from a selection of over 100 different products and pick a delivery day. Customers pay only a $5 flat delivery fee, with no additional membership fees, convenience fees or tips. For the month of November, Misfits Market will also donate the dollar equivalent of one meal to Feeding America member food banks in California for every order placed in the state.
Customers will also now have access to dairy products, a product expansion that was announced alongside the geographic expansion. So far, butter and 25 different hard and soft cheeses are available on the platform, with milk, yogurt, eggs and more to be added in the coming months.
Misfits Market said it has saved 225 million pounds of food, nearly three-quarters of which would otherwise go to waste, since its founding in 2018. It also delivered a total of $155 million to farmers and producers as a new stream of “rescue revenue” to help them earn money and reduce waste.
“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,” said Dick Peixoto, owner and grower of Lakeside Organic Gardens in Watsonville, California. “Misfits Market has been an excellent partner, focusing on our needs as we contend with challenges such as COVID, extreme weather, fires and labor shortages.”
Though the addition of California to Misfits Market’s coverage area is a massive one, the company isn’t done quite yet. According to Selterman, Misfits Market will expand to cover the entire continental U.S. within the next few months as it continues its mission of eradicating all U.S. food deserts by 2025.
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