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Emilie Vanpoperinghe didn’ t initially set out to build a business. However, following a trip to Portugal, that is exactly what happened – a personal experience compelled her to start a rescue mission, saving food that would otherwise go to waste and delivering it to customers. After nurturing the simple idea, Emilie and her co-founder Deepak launched Oddbox in 2016, beginning with 20 customers in London and distributing the fruit and vegetables in their own car. Fast forward ten years, Oddbox has expanded considerably and covers an impressive 70 percent of the UK.
“ It started with a very simple moment,” Emilie tells Food Chain.“ Tasting an ugly but incredible tomato in Portugal and wondering why I couldn’ t get such tomatoes in the UK. It made me realize how disconnected we’ ve become from food. We only ever see perfection on shelves, so we assume anything
else isn’ t good enough.” After conducting further research, she found some shocking statistics.“ I discovered that 40 percent of the food we produce never gets eaten and half of the waste happens even before it reaches our kitchens – not because it’ s bad, but because it doesn’ t fit supermarket standards. That felt completely irrational to me.” This realization led to the creation of Oddbox, which today has delivered over ten million boxes and rescued over 65,000 tons of food – the same weight as 10,000 African elephants!
Evolving from an operation to save‘ wonky’ veg to becoming a trusted sustainable UK food brand, Oddbox now has a broader mission. Not only is it helping people eat well with all the produce already available, but the company is also reducing waste across the supply chain – not just on farms but in people’ s homes, too.“ 50 percent of food waste happens at home and we’ re also
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