2023: A Year in Review

We might be biased, but looking back at the past 12 months, we’re convinced that 2023 was our best year yet. More delicious items in our store, more sustainable ways to deliver your orders, and more food rescued all added up to a big impact on our food system. We couldn’t have done any of it without our loyal customers, our trusted farm and producer partners, and of course the best team by our side. (It’s not bragging if it’s true, right?) It’d be impossible to recap everything we accomplished, but it sure as heck was fun trying as we reflected on this past year. Now, onto the highlights!

We celebrated one year as a food-waste-fighting family. 

October marked the first anniversary of joining forces with our friends at Imperfect Foods. Now that we’re one big team, we have a new shared mission: to reduce food waste and make shopping for sustainable, high-quality groceries easier and more affordable.

Partnering up meant we could source and rescue even more food than before, plus offer the Imperfect Foods brand in addition to our Odds & Ends brand to bring you more high-quality staples at great prices.

We brought our own delivery and packaging return programs to customers.

Misfits Market customers in select areas now have their orders hand delivered (with a smile!) by our own drivers using our own fleet of vans. Not only do our in-house drivers ensure your groceries make it to you in tip-top shape—they also pick up all your packaging, too! In fact, we’re the only nationwide grocer that takes back packaging for reuse and recycling for free. Learn more about our packaging return program here.

We brought more than 980 new items to our store…

Among them: harder-to-find fruits (you raved about kiwi berries!), one-of-a-kind flavors (snickerdoodle kombucha, anyone?!), and delightful discoveries (like Flock chicken skin crisps, a favorite of our snack buyer). 

As for the bestsellers, limes took the crown for produce, followed by avocados and cucumbers. In our grocery aisles, your love for large pasture-raised eggs earned ‘em gold, while boneless skinless chicken thighs and Minor Figures oat milk took silver and bronze respectively.

…and we rescued even more of them from lesser outcomes. 

Because we’re the only grocer that fights food waste in the way we source food, you helped us pull off some amazing rescue stories. Like when a supplier to restaurants and food service had an excess of creamy salted butter but not enough places to sell it. Or when a crop of acorn squash with multicolored skin was at risk because traditional supermarkets prefer them to be solid green. 

Our rescues weren’t limited to food, either. When we learned that a slew of bottles were being rejected solely due to misplaced label stickers or torn foil, we scooped them up and offered them at a great value to customers in mystery bundles. Speaking of vino…

We opened up a la carte shopping for wine.

In November, we made it possible to hand-pick the individual bottles you love most for our wine bundles. Though we still have curated picks to match certain foods and festivities, it’s now easier than ever to get your exact faves right to your doorstep as you shop for groceries.  

We brought exclusive upcycled items to our store.

This spring we launched our first-ever Upcycling Challenge, a competition for food entrepreneurs to create an innovative and tasty food product that repurposes excess food or waste. From 114 entries, we selected our top three and collaborated with our brand partners to bring their ideas to life. The results: Chomps’ meat sticks made from meat left over from the production process, Petit Pot’s rice pudding made with broken rice grains, and Atoria’s mini naan made with spent grains, a byproduct of beer brewing. Just goes to show how many tasty solutions there are for turning food waste into something delicious when you get creative!

Together, we rescued more than 26,444,000 pounds of food from going to waste in this year alone.

To paint a clearer picture: that amount of food would feed a city the size of Phoenix, AZ, or Philadelphia, PA, three square meals for 4 straight days. To date, we’ve rescued a combined total of 207 million pounds of food from going to waste, a number we can’t wait to collectively keep growing. 

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We gave back while we limited food waste.

Our mission to reduce food waste goes beyond just selling funny-looking produce—we strive to have every piece of food that comes our way go to its highest outcome. In collaboration with 67 partners around our fulfillment centers (the places where your boxes are packed with care each week), we donated 5,888,000 pounds of food (and counting!) to those most in need in our communities. Our community also helped us donate more than 1.5 million meals* to people facing hunger through our partnership with Feeding America.

Food isn’t the only resource we save. In 2023, our Portland, OR fulfillment center achieved TRUE Zero Waste Gold certification, which involves “the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of products, packaging, and materials without burning and with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.” It’s a big honor—fewer than 50 facilities worldwide have that distinction—and it’s one we’re working to achieve for all of our facilities by 2025. 

None of this would have been possible without your support, so to say thanks, we’re upping our referral bonus! From 12/26/2023 until 1/15/2024, when you share Misfits Market with a friend, they’ll earn $15 off their first box and you’ll get $35 in credits after they build their first box**.

Hungry for more? Check out our most popular social posts and blogs of the year!

Our Lemon Posset recipe was our most coveted one of the year, with nearly 1.5 million views on Instagram alone. In fact, it was so popular that we tried our hand at a mandarin orange version, which is currently our 6th most-viewed recipe of the year.

You really cared about saving food from going to waste at home. Our most-saved guide was: Fresh Produce That Shouldn’t Be Stored Together

The freezer made its way to our list of favorite kitchen tools. Learn how to freeze fresh produce and other pantry staples to get the most out of your grocery haul—and see why the humble ice cube tray can quickly become one of your most-used kitchen tools with our hacks for what you can freeze in an ice cube tray to prevent food waste

Enjoyed this Year-in-Review? Browse through our archive of recaps from 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019.

*$1 helps provide at least 10 meals secured by Feeding America on behalf of local member food banks.

**Referral offer valid for orders placed by new customers using your unique referral code before January 15, 2024 at 6 p.m. ET. Offer not valid for past purchases and may not be combined with other offers. Offer subject to applicable order minimum. Limit 30 referrals per customer per calendar year. Please visit our Referral page and Terms of Service for complete details. Exclusions may apply. Please visit our Referral page and Terms of Service for complete details. Exclusions may apply.