This Company Cuts Down on Food Waste One Juice at a Time
The first thing to greet you in most grocery stores are perfect piles of shiny apples, symmetric avocados, plump tomatoes, and a variety of other delectable fruits and vegetables. However, behind that beauty is the startling fact that farms toss out about 20 billion pounds of produce each year, through crops left unharvested or cosmetic imperfection.
Campaigns like Save the Food and research published by the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) have brought attention to the issue of food waste. Celebrity chefs are using their influence to get the word out, such as Anthony Bourdain’s movie Wasted! The Story of Food Waste (2017) and Dan Barber’s book The Third Plate (2015). And now, businesses are popping up with plans to turn food waste into profit and educate people on the issue.
Consider Misfit Juicery, founded by Phil Wong and Ann Yang while undergraduates at Georgetown University. In 2013, Phil spent a semester in Senegal studying landfills, and he was surprised by the magnitude of food waste and its environmental impact. The 2012 NRDC report further opened his eyes; it estimated that food waste is responsible for at least 2.6% of US greenhouse gases, a portion of which comes from food rotting in landfills. Ann was focused on studying the food system through the lens of race, gender, and class. When Phil had returned from Senegal, he shared what he had learned with Ann; she, too, was struck by the enormity of the issue.
So, in 2015, as college seniors, Phil and Ann bought 100 pounds of “ugly” peaches from a local farmer, borrowed a friend’s Vitamix, and bought a case of mason jars. They delivered these juice “samples” to a few coffee shops on campus, free of charge. Soon after, these vendors became their first retail partners. And just like that, Misfit Juicery was born.
Wong and I spoke about how Misfit Juicery is helping take a chunk out of the 20 billion pounds of wasted produce, why he thinks the issue of food waste is finally in the spotlight, and why it is up to consumers to take action.
Misfit Juicery works with farmers, distributors, and fresh-cut producers to utilize the produce and scraps that would otherwise go unused. How did you find and convince them to be a supplier for Misfit?
Most of our suppliers are in the Chesapeake Bay watershed region — what most people call the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. A lot of people are surprised by how relationship-driven farming and agriculture is, so it really was just establishing good relationships — first a single farmer, then a single distributor, and using word of mouth and references to talk to their friends and their friends [and so on]. If you do right by a single supplier than that just exponentially increases your options to go to other suppliers.
For instance, our first supplier was Tim from Ashton Farms of West Virginia. He sells produce at the Georgetown Farmers’ Market, which is how Ann and I knew him. He was the guy flinging fruits and veggies on our college campus, and we just went up to him and asked, “What do you have that you can’t sell?” On that first day, he gave us 100 pounds of ugly peaches; we then developed and nurtured the relationship from there.
As how we convinced them to work with Misfit, I think a lot of people assume we get our produce for free or pennies on the dollar, and a big part of our sourcing philosophy is making sure we are paying the right amount for our food. We can make an economic case for why farmers and distributors should be selling us this product instead of throwing it out or writing it off. In terms of fresh-cut suppliers, product was literally being thrown away and is now generating income for them. In many cases, the business argument for reducing food waste has been a pretty easy one.
The process of juicing creates waste in and of itself. What do you do with the excess pulp?
We compost our pulp, and we have done interesting collaborations with chefs who have created pretty delicious products from our pulp. One chef made a carrot quick bread, which is definitely an inspiration for us. Seeing people like Dan Barber do a juice pulp burger — that’s something that is really interesting to us. Composting is great, but moving up the hierarchy from compost to something humans can enjoy and consume is the goal. We are hoping to one day launch a product from our juice pulp.
Who are the worst offenders of food waste: farms, manufacturing, retail, or the consumer?
I am going to go with the consumer. I say that not just because of how much waste we are generating in our households, but also in terms of cultural standards that we as consumers are demanding, driving waste down the value chain. If retailers don’t think consumers will buy dimpled apples, then they won’t buy them from the farmer, and the farmer won’t harvest or sell them. This is a cascading effect in terms of consumer standards for produce.
I think this idea of perfection in produce that we have — everything needs to look perfect — that’s simply not the way nature works, and we shouldn’t expect it to work that way.
Food waste is becoming a dinner table topic thanks to celebrity chefs like Anthony Bourdain and Dan Barber. But why now? Why do you believe food waste is finally getting the attention it deserves?
Food waste is expensive on so many levels: environmentally, economically, and morally. I think it was always poised as a low hanging fruit for people to latch onto and spread awareness. If you ask where your food comes from, the next natural question is what happens to the food I am not eating. If you follow that rabbit hole, as Ann and I have done, you learn about food waste quickly.
What are three things the consumer can do to fight food waste?
As consumers, we need to be more educated about our food, what it should look like, and where it comes from.
First, we should learn how to understand expiration dates. A lot of people will see an expiration date of December 7th, and they will stop eating it as of December 3rd. Those dates aren’t regulated by the FDA, so often times companies will short-date their own dates to be extra conservative.
Second: Meal planning. A lot of people will shop on instinct or impulse. If you plan your meals for the week, you will know exactly how much you should buy at the grocery store, and you won’t be making or purchasing more than you can eat.
And third is leftovers. I think if people, myself included, could get more accustomed to being comfortable eating leftovers that would go a long way with decreasing our food waste.
What is the most creative way you have re-purposed leftovers?
This is perhaps stretching the definition of “leftovers,” but we go to trade shows a few times a year where there’s inevitably rampant waste — boxes and boxes of food getting donated and just as much getting thrown out. It’s always fun to come home from those shows with a smorgasbord of loot and putting together something tasty but patently weird.
