Product Profile: Misfits Market & Imperfect Foods
INDUSTRY
food
Category
food/grocery delivery services
products Profiled
Misfits Market online grocery delivery service
Imperfect Foods online grocery delivery service
H-Score
53
ranked 7th of 25 within the food industry
ranked 31st of 76 overall
product descriptions
Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods offer online grocery delivery services. Misfits Market acquired Imperfect Foods in 2022 and operates both brand’s services.
Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods services work similarly: they each provide regular, weekly grocery delivery on a company-set schedule. Each started largely with the delivery of foods with imperfections, which could be offered more affordably. Each service offers produce, pantry items, dairy, snacks, plant-based items, meat and seafood, wine, and pet items. Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods also offer subscription plans in which weekly groceries are selected and delivered automatically if they meet the order minimum, with users retaining the options to adjust their carts or skip and pause their orders.
product use
Users shop directly from Misfits Market or Imperfect Foods, either on their websites or using mobile apps. After an onboarding process where users are asked questions related to dietary preferences (e.g. organic foods, vegan or vegetarian diet) and types of foods (e.g. produce, meat, dairy) to be ordered, they pre-fill a weekly cart for each user, who then modifies items in their cart during shopping periods. Once an order is finalized, it ships on a designated day of the week.
who’s affected
influence on health-related behaviors
EATING
moderate to strong positive influence
Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods facilitate the purchase of grocery items and thus their impact on the healthfulness of their customers' diets is largely dependent on the choices that the customers make and their influence on those choices. By selecting “rescued foods,” the services offer foods, mostly produce, at substantial discounts, making generally healthy foods more affordable.(4)
Broadly speaking, grocery shopping leads to more home-cooked meals, which, in general, have been shown to be healthier than meals eaten out or ordered from restaurants.(5-9) People who cook at home more frequently also tend to have diets that have higher compliance with dietary guidelines.(10)
In Building H’s consumer research, over 90% of users of online grocery delivery services (not specific to Imperfect Foods) said that their groceries were healthier (68%) or as healthy as (23%) takeout or delivery meals.(11)
Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods influence their users’ choices in two ways. First, they offer limited selections of items (compared to traditional supermarkets) and the items are mostly fresh ingredients. (They have a limited selection of prepared food items.) Second, for users on their weekly grocery subscription plan, they pre-fill the user’s cart with items based on the user’s previous purchases and with additional items that it recommends. According to Misfits Market, recommendations are influenced by a variety of factors, including past purchases and the food preferences users set, but tend to over index on fresh produce for a users' first boxes.(12)
Users are presented with promoted/recommended items or can choose from a menu of “aisles.” At the time of review, the aisles included, in order, “Fruit,” “Vegetables,” “Meat & Seafood,” “Deli & Prepared Foods,” “Dairy & Eggs,” and more. Neither Misfits Market nor Imperfect Foods offers a specific “healthy” aisle.(13,14)
Online grocery delivery services can promote healthier shopping choices and promote access to healthier foods in transportation-scarce and low-resource areas.(15)
- Work across the industry to pursue options to rate the healthfulness of individual food items and then integrate those ratings throughout the user experience.
- Enable users to express preferences for how healthy they want their diet to be; align recommendations with those preferences; and provide users with feedback on how well their choices are supporting those preferences.
- Offer EBT purchasing when eligible.
PHYSICAL ACTVITY
neutral to slight negative influence
While Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods promote home cooking, they also potentially deter customers from the physical activity associated with grocery shopping. These services allow customers to shop while sedentary, which can be detrimental to physical health. Note that users of online grocery delivery services typically continue to shop in person to some degree as well, so the effect is a reduction, rather than a substitution, in in-person grocery shopping. In Building H’s consumer research, nearly half (47%) of users of grocery delivery services (not specific to Misfits Market/Imperfect Foods) also shopped in person more than twice a month.(16)
On the other hand, assuming that the grocery shopping leads to home cooking, cooking a meal certainly involves more physical activity than preparing ready-to-eat or takeout/delivery meals.
Sleeping
neutral to slight positive influence
Travel time has been shown to have a negative relationship to sleep time, so the service could improve sleep for users to the extent it cuts down on trips to the grocery store and time spent shopping.(17)
Additionally, if the services from Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods cut down on stress related to grocery shopping in-person (travel, finding groceries in-store, time crunches, etc), they could also reduce stress-related decreases in sleep quality.(18)
Engaging Socially
neutral to slight negative influence
The services from Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods allow customers to stay at home while shopping. As such, these services likely reduce the casual social interactions associated with trips to grocery stores. In Building H’s consumer research, 54% of shoppers (not specific to Imperfect Foods) rated these interactions positively, as compared with 9% rating them negatively.(19)
- Offer family meal and party planning features to simplify the process of developing menus and ordering ingredients as a way to lower the barriers to hosting meals with friends and family.
- Offer the ability to send a delivery of groceries as a gift to someone.
Getting Outdoors
slight negative influence
To the degree that their services cut down on trips to grocery stores and supermarkets, Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods could potentially reduce time spent outdoors.
Notes
Misfits Market. Direct communication, November 2023.
Frequently Asked Questions. Misfits Market website, accessed November 22, 2023.
Frequently Asked Questions. Imperfect Foods website, accessed November 22, 2023.
Misfits Market. Direct communication, November 2023.
Julia Wolfson and Sara Bleich. Is Cooking at Home Associated with Better Diet Quality or Weight-Loss Intention? Public Health Nutrition, Volume 18, Supplement 8 June 2015 , pp. 1397-1406.
Junxiu Liu et al. Quality of Meals Consumed by US Adults at Full-Service and Fast-Food Restaurants, 2003–2016: Persistent Low Quality and Widening Disparities. The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 150, Issue 4, April 2020, pp. 873–883.
R. An. Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption and daily energy and nutrient intakes in US adults. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Volume 70 (2016), pp. 97–103.
Sharon Kirkpatrick et al. Fast-food menu offerings vary in dietary quality, but are consistently poor. Public Health Nutrition. Volume 17, Issue 4 (2014), pp. 924–31.
Lisa Powell and Binh Nguyen. Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption among children and adolescents: effect on energy, beverage, and nutrient intake. JAMA Pediatrics. Volume 167, Issue 1 (January 2013), pp. 14–20.
Arpita Tiwari et al. Cooking at Home: A Strategy to Comply With U.S. Dietary Guidelines at No Extra Cost. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Volume 52, Issue 5 (May 2017), pp.616–24.
Steve Downs. A Survey of Modern Life: Food; Delivery Apps, Meal Kits, Groceries and Cooking Dinner. Building H on Medium. January 20, 2022.
Misfits Market. Direct communication, November 2023.
Misfits Markets website, accessed October 29, 2023.
Imperfect Foods website, accessed October 29, 2023.
Tawanna R. Dillahunt et al. Online Grocery Delivery Services: An Opportunity to Address Food Disparities in Transportation-scarce Areas. CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Steve Downs. A Survey of Modern Life: Food; Delivery Apps, Meal Kits, Groceries and Cooking Dinner. Building H on Medium. January 20, 2022.
Matthias Basner et al. American Time Use Survey: Sleep Time and Its Relationship to Waking Activities. Sleep, Volume 30, Issue 9, September 2007, pp. 1085–1095.
Torbjörn Åkerstedt et al. Predicting sleep quality from stress and prior sleep – A study of day-to-day covariation across six weeks. Sleep Medicine, Volume 13, Issue 6, June 2012, Pages 674-679.
Downs (2022).