Imperfect Foods ( what we do with imperfect produce ) | My First Million Podcast

Selling ugly produce to restaurants in India.

Yes.

Is that a YC thing?

It's a YC company. Yes. Okay. So India.

And that's a company in America. And what's it called?

It's in India. So it's farmtheory.in. Oh, there is also one here.

Yeah.

There's a, there's like a farm-to-table box. I think that's the ugly produce thing in America for what it's called.

Me too, I just Googled it. It's Imperfect Foods.

Yeah, Imperfect Foods. So I'll give you the stats on these guys. So they're doing $22,000 a month of MRR. They say 40% profit margins. They say they're growing 65% week on week, which doesn't mean anything 'cause it's YC, but they're on track to get to $1 million ARR in the coming months. What they're doing is interesting. They're taking, Farming is huge in India. So they're saying, okay, there's tons of farming, there's tons of produce produced, there's tons that's not going to get sold because it looks ugly. It's not good for consumer retail. But we can buy that stuff for cheap because it's just waste otherwise. We can sell it to restaurants who don't care about the aesthetic look of the, you know, they're not picking like a consumer does in the grocery store where they pick, you know, the best looking one out of a barrel. The restaurants don't care. They're chopping it up, processing it, turning it into food. If they can get lower food costs, fantastic. And so they're looking at, you know, right now it's $720 a month just for the restaurants in Bangalore, which is a part of India. And they believe it's a big market. They claim a $500 million market just in Bangalore, just through the restaurants that are there. Sounds a little high to me, but the value prop makes sense. The restaurant saves about 30% by buying ugly produce. The farm gets some revenue out of something that would otherwise be no revenue. And they take their cut in the middle. I like it. What do you think?

I like it now, but let me— I'm always being like the negative guy. I like it, but let me tell you, okay, I'm a subscriber to Imperfect Produce. Um, first of all, it's not imperfect. Like, this is a shtick of the— of, uh, Farm Theory, of them selling like things that are ugly.

So what are you saying? They look normal, you're saying?

Yeah, it looks normal. I mean, it doesn't look like— it's a wonderful marketing scheme, but it's so like, it's just normal shit, right? Right.

Because I'm guessing you would not sign up for something that just says, here's vegetable delivery.

Correct. Yes. It's like saying— there's a famous copywriter named Joe Sugarman. He wrote this great ad for a new cast is it called Casio, a Casio watch, and he's like, we use space-age aluminum with quartz movement, and fucking every watch has that same aluminum, and quartz movement is used in nearly every single watch. He just explained it in a great way. And so this is the same thing with these guys, and it's a shtick that works. It's a real— it's like Guinness putting a ping pong ball in their beer. I don't know about that.

What is that? What are they doing?

Guinness beer, if you buy it in the can, there's a ping pong ball in it because apparently that ping pong ball has a little bit of nitric oxide, some type of like gas in there that keeps it super fizzy.

I see. Okay.

And when they released that ball, it like went up big time.

I love it.

Yeah. So this is great marketing. I'm into it. I don't know anything about India, so it's hard for me to say that, but I do know that I just Googled it. Imperfect Produce, they have 200,000 subscribers.

And what do you pay per month roughly?

It's a weekly bill. I think I was paying $200 a month.

Wow. So incredible.

Yeah. Big market. So yeah, I think it would depend on how, talented these entrepreneurs are, but, uh, you definitely can build something significantly significant here.

Right.