Building H Index

 

Imperfect Foods

 
 

INDUSTRY

food

Category

food/grocery delivery service

products Profiled

Imperfect Foods online grocery delivery service

 
 

H-Score

 

53

ranked 4th of 16 within food industry

ranked 16th of 37 overall

 
 

product description

 

Imperfect Foods’s main service is automatic, regular grocery delivery on a company-set schedule. Their service largely started from the delivery of foods with imperfections, which could be offered more affordably. At the time of review, it offered produce, pantry items, dairy, snacks, plant-based items, meat and fish, along with some wellness/beauty products. Imperfect Foods serves regions representing 80% of the U.S. population. In 2020, they served 400,000 customers.(1)

 

product usage

 

Users shop directly from Imperfect Foods, either on their website or using a mobile app. 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, Imperfect Foods pre-fills 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.

 

influence on health-related behaviors

 
 

EATING

moderate positive influence

 

Imperfect Foods facilitates the purchase of grocery items and thus its impact on the healthfulness of its customers' diets is largely dependent on the choices that the customers make and its influence on those choices.

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.(2-6) People who cook at home more frequently also tend to have diets that have higher compliance with dietary guidelines.(7)  

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 (67.9%) or as healthy as (23.2%) takeout or delivery meals.(8)

Imperfect Foods influences its users’ choices in two ways. First, it offers a limited selection of items (compared to traditional supermarkets) and the items are almost exclusively fresh ingredients. (Other than some snacks, there is no category for prepared food items.) Second, it pre-fills the user’s cart with items based on the user’s previous purchases and with additional items that it recommends. It is not clear how those Imperfect Foods makes those recommendations or if it prioritizes healthier items. Imperfect Foods does not offer a specific “healthy” category.(9)

Online grocery delivery services can promote healthier shopping choices and promote access to healthier foods in transportation-scarce and low-resource areas.(10)

 

opportunities:

  • Work across the industry to pursue options to rate the healthfulness of individual food items and then consider using such ratings to give users feedback on overall healthfulness of their orders and/or propose healthy substitutions for less healthy items.
  • Offer EBT purchasing when eligible.
 
 

PHYSICAL ACTVITY

neutral influence

 

While Imperfect Foods promotes home cooking, it also potentially deters customers from the physical activity associated with grocery shopping. Imperfect Foods allows 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 (46.8%) of users of grocery delivery services (not specific to Imperfect Foods) also shopped in person more than twice a month.(11)

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.(12) 

Additionally, if Imperfect Foods’s service cuts down on stress related to grocery shopping in-person (travel, finding groceries in-store, time crunches, etc), it could also reduce stress-related decreases in sleep quality.(13)

 
 

Engaging Socially

neutral to slight negative influence

 

Imperfect Foods’s service allows customers to stay at home while shopping. As such, the service likely reduces 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.(14)

 

opportunities:

  • Offer 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.
 
 

Getting Outdoors

slight negative influence

 

To the degree that its service cuts down on trips to grocery stores and supermarkets, Imperfect Foods could potentially reduce time spent outdoors.

 
 
 
 

Notes

 

  1. Imperfect Foods. Impact Report 2020. p. 6.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. R. An. Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption and daily energy and nutrient intakes in US adults. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2016 Jan;70(1):97–103.

  5. S.I. Kirkpatrick et al. Fast-food menu offerings vary in dietary quality, but are consistently poor. Public Health Nutr. 2014 Apr;17(4):924–31.

  6. L.M. Powell and BT Nguyen. Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption among children and adolescents: effect on energy, beverage, and nutrient intake. JAMA Pediatr. 2013 Jan;167(1):14–20.

  7. A. Tiwari et al. Cooking at Home: A Strategy to Comply With U.S. Dietary Guidelines at No Extra Cost. Am J Prev Med. 2017 May 1;52(5):616–24.

  8. Steve Downs. A Survey of Modern Life: Food; Delivery Apps, Meal Kits, Groceries and Cooking Dinner. Building H on Medium. January 20, 2022.

  9. Imperfect Foods website, accessed January 28, 2022.

  10. 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

  11. Downs (2022)

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. Downs (2022)