Full Harvest, in San Francisco, has raised $2 million to support online sales of “ugly” produce—the goods grocers consider unfit for supermarket sales. The funding round was led by Wireframe Ventures and backed by BBG Ventures, Early Impact Ventures, Impact Engine, VC Radicle, and several angel investors.
Founder Christine Mosley, formerly with fresh juice company Organic Avenue, had been searching for low-cost, high-quality produce. At an organic lettuce farm she visited, “The farmers were throwing out all these crunchy, green leaves because they were looking for just the perfect heads of lettuce for the stores,” she said.
Meanwhile, Wasteless raised $400,000 to fight food waste in grocery stores. Based in Israel, Wasteless helps retailers track their inventory and flag products most likely to be thrown away.
“Today, supermarkets don’t know how many products they have on the shelf unless someone does a manual check,” said founder Ben Biron. The funds were committed by a group of early-stage venture capital firms and accelerators including SOSV, Food Angels, and Winston Ltd.
Other startups targeting the food waste challenge include Inspirafarms in east Africa and Central America and Yume in Australia.
This post originally appeared in ImpactAlpha’s daily newsletter. Get The Brief.
Photo credit: Tomer Appelbaum /haaretz.com
This post was originally published on ImpactAlpha.com
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