Back in early 2020, when the world went on lockdown, Emily and I were looking for an easy and affordable way to get produce sent directly to our doorstep. That’s when we originally heard about Misfits Market.
The concept of buying “ugly” produce really intrigued us so we decided to try them out.
Since then we’ve used their produce delivery service on and off for over a year now. In that time though, they have changed their service pretty substantially.
In this review, we’re going to cover what our personal experience has been like using Misfits Market, what we love about the service, and what could definitely be improved.
Before hearing about Misfits Market, I had no idea of the level at which food was wasted before it even hits a grocery store.
According to the USDA, nearly one third of the food produced by farmers goes uneaten. While that fact is staggering alone, it just barely scratches the surface of the bigger issue—the environmental problem. Every year, 30 million acres of cropland, 4.2 trillion gallons of water, and nearly two billion pounds of fertilizer are used to grow food that is never eaten (source).
The problem with food waste is hard to pinpoint because it can occur in every step of the supply chain. However, one of those steps is so ridiculous I laughed when I first heard it.
10 million tons of cosmetically imperfect or unharvested foods are wasted each year simply because most grocery stores have such strict “beauty” standards for produce.
Misfits Market was created out of the idea to try to make an impact against food waste by taking these cosmetically imperfect (yet still edible) fruits and vegetables that grocery stores don’t want and would have been thrown away, and creating a produce delivery service.
Getting started with Misfits Market is pretty straightforward. They currently offer 2 different types of plans.
In each plan, you are able to customize your box to your liking. If you don’t, Misfits Market will send you a random selection of produce.
One important thing to note, that Misfits Market doesn’t really do a great job of explaining, is that these plans basically work as a credit.
To give you an example, we use the Madness Box, which gives us $30 worth of food. If we don’t customize our box, Misfits Market will send us $30 worth of produce. However, if we choose to customize our box, we have to add at least $30 worth of food. If we go over $30 worth of food, we pay the difference as an additional fee.
While Misfits Market started out purely as a produce delivery service, they’ve recently evolved into becoming much more.
Today, you can add a variety of fruits, vegetables, and even pantry essentials to your box. Here’s a brief overview of some of their offerings...
Misfits Market does a good job of making sure their packaging is environmentally friendly.
I’ve also noticed throughout the time using Misfits Market that they use minimal packaging. This is where things go a little south.
For an environmental perspective, I see why they’re using less packaging but, as you can see in the images and review video above, the fruits and vegetables are all mostly unprotected in the box. While it’s great they don’t use plastic or any additional waste to pack them in, this can lead to them getting thrown around in the box while in transit.
There have been instances where we’ve received a broken cucumber, broken carrots, and bruised fruits that was clearly the fault of the delivery driver. But Misfits Market could figure out a way to protect the individual items in an efficient and environmentally friendly way.
As mentioned above, we started our Misfits Market subscription back in early 2020. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who thought this was a good idea. Back then, so many people were ordering that they literally had to pause subscriptions for new customers. Luckily, we got in before that.
Because of all the issues surrounding delivery and new customers, we ran into some odd issues back then. For example, every once in a while, our box would accidentally get sent to Georgia. This is exceptionally odd because Misfits Market is located in New Jersey and we live in New Jersey. My only thought for why this could have happened is that we live in Hoboken, New Jersey and there is another Hoboken located in Georgia…
Unfortunately, because of these delivery issues, our box would go from New Jersey to Georgia and back to New Jersey. This meant that sometimes our boxes would come with spoiled food. Thankfully, customer service would simply send us a new box right away. The only issue with that is because we were on weekly deliveries, we would end up getting the new box and then get our weekly box a few days later. This meant way more food than we could eat and led to us actually wasting food (which was the whole thing we were trying to avoid in the first place).
The good news is that we have not had any of those issues since early 2020 and delivery has been normal.
Here’s a look at what we received in our recent box:
They also include a little pamphlet that lets you know how long the produce in your box lasts and a recipe card that gives you meal ideas for using your produce.
One of the biggest selling points of Misfits Market is price. They say that you can get “up to 40% off grocery store prices” right on their homepage. Let’s see if that’s true by comparing the price of what we received above to our local grocery store (via Instacart).
Misfit Market Price
Grocery Store Price
This price comparison actually surprised me. Nearly every item we ordered from Misfits Market was less expensive than its counterpart from our local grocery store (via Instacart). There were a few items I couldn’t find on Instacart so I linked directly to other sources where they could be purchased.
One thing to keep in mind though is that Misfits Market charges a shipping fee of $5.50. But even factoring that in to the cost above, it still comes out cheaper than what I would have paid using Instacart.
I mentioned above that we initially had a few delivery issues where we needed to contact customer support. The process was very simple. We simply emailed and let them know what happened. They checked the tracking info to confirm the delivery issue and immediately sent another box.
If you’ve been researching produce delivery services, you’ve probably come across Imperfect Foods (previously called “Imperfect Produce”).
Both Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods started out as produce delivery services. However, I’ve noticed that they’ve both been neck and neck in changing their services to become more like full grocery delivery services.
The biggest difference between the two is that Imperfect Foods offers more food variety, specifically when it comes to meats. Misfits Market currently has zero meats or plant-based alternatives. On the flip side, I’ve ordered everything from grass-fed beef to chicken using Imperfect Foods.
Community Supported Agriculture (also called a “CSA”) is basically a produce subscription but from your local farmers. If you are only looking to purchase produce, I highly suggest supporting your local farmers by seeing if there are any CSA’s that can deliver to you here.
If you need more than just produce or there are no CSA’s that can deliver to you, definitely consider Misfits Market.
Through researching and writing this review, I noticed a lot of questions pop up over and over again. I decided to add this section to help anyone that may have similar questions and need answers.
It generally has taken no longer than 3 days for us to receive our Misfits Market box after our order has been placed and confirmed. As you can see in the screenshot above, our order was confirmed on April 14th and we received it on April 16th.
If you don’t customize your box and add what you specifically want, Misfits Market will send you an assortment of produce (both fruits and vegetables). With any box we haven’t customized, it’s been a bit of a mystery what we’ll receive. Sometimes it’s classics like strawberries, blueberries, apples, and pears. Sometimes we get strange looking vegetables like that romanesco broccoli. The good news is that Misfits Market will email you when it’s time to customize your box so you don’t have to worry about remembering each week.
Over the past year over using Misfits Market we’ve only ordered a handful of items that needed to be kept cold (during the hot summer months). I noticed that they used a water-based ice pack that they say is drain-safe. Although, I’m very hesitant to pour anything down my drain that isn’t water.
Misfits Market makes canceling simple. Just log into your account, click “Manage Subscription” and scroll down to where it says “cancel”. They also give you the option to temporarily pause and skip weeks whenever you’d like.
Yes, it’s very easy to change your preferred shipping day. You simply log into your account, go to “Manage Subscription” and you’ll see a section called “Subscription preferences”. There you’ll be able to change your preferred shipping day to any day of the week. You can also change your delivery frequency from weekly to biweekly.
They source their foods from all over the Americas.
Now that we’ve gone over our personal experience using Misfits Market, let’s talk about what we love and what we think could be improved…
If you’ve made it this far and you’re looking to place your first Misfits Market order, we’re here to help. We’ve gathered all of the best coupons and promotional codes below to help save you some money.
If any of the promo codes above are not working or you know of any better ones, please let us know in the comments below!
Over our time using Misfits Market, we’ve been happy with our experience. It’s been one of the easiest ways to ensure that we eater better food throughout the week.
The funny part is that the foods they’ve sent us really haven’t been “ugly” like they claim they are. Sure, every once and a while we get a weird looking vegetable or fruit. But for the most part, everything has looked pretty much what I’d expect from the grocery store.
If you’re very particular about your produce, this box probably isn’t for you. You’re likely to occasionally get odd-looking fruits and vegetables. And if you don’t customize your box, you could end up with produce you don’t really prefer.
That being said, I would consider this box to be a great value for what you get. Nearly everything we’ve received over the years has been organic and less expensive than what we’d get in our local grocery store, which makes it super convenient to eat better.
Overall, I’m impressed with Misfits Market. My one wish is that they continue adding more food variety (such as meats, pastas, and premade foods) to really make this a full grocery delivery service.
Have a question about Misfits Market we didn’t answer? Leave your comment below and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!
