It was a good experiment, one that I wrote about here and here. To recap: I figured that if I had a box of mixed produce showing up on my doorstep every week, it would make me cook with more veggies. It worked! The veggies were good quality (if, of course, imperfect), and there was a wide variety available. I could customize the box to get rid of any traces of onion-like crud. However, even the small veggie box was too much for me.
Now, the company has changed its moniker to “Imperfect Foods” because they now sell lots of stuff, including dairy and eggs and soon even meats. That would mean I could substitute in those items for some of the veggies and simply start doing my groceries this way. That’s a great idea but, some of the rest of their setup really doesn’t work entirely well for that. The advantage of the veggie boxes is that none of the foods in them would go bad if they sat around in the sun for an hour or two–necessary because there are limited delivery windows available in each area and you have to set them a bit in advance, so on any given week you might not be home. Also, I’ve had multiple occasions when the delivery driver dropped off my box an hour or two before the delivery window and didn’t send the text alerting me until the actual delivery window. I have to presume that’s because they don’t want the company being automatically alerted that the delivery was made outside the delivery window, but well, it also means that I can’t afford to get any of that dairy, eggs, or protein because I can’t risk having it sit out. (Yes, I did let the company know this had happened, although not every time, since some times weren’t as severe as others and, well, I prefer not to complain about the same thing over and over.)
I also don’t particularly want Imperfect Foods to substitute for my groceries. They’re unlikely to have everything I can get from Whole Foods anytime soon, and I don’t want to have to pay two delivery fees every week if I don’t have to. I also feel like now that I have some practice, I can be better about picking up enough veggies from the store without the prod.
I’m absolutely glad that I tried this out, but it clearly isn’t going to be a long-term thing for me. I also decided not to renew my Rotten Fruit Box subscription; I can get most of the same things from nuts.com without the hugely long shipping time, and supplement with occasional one-time orders from the RFB when they have sales (which are often customer-only, so I’m glad I’m a customer!).
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