Handmade Tales – In the latest of our artisan series, Doris Neubauer meets Wendy Zhou, founder of Perfectly Imperfect.
It was March 25, 2020, the first day of the national lockdown, when Wendy Zhou’s sister called. Eileen, who had given up her job as a registered nurse in the ICU department, was growing tomatoes in Pukekohe and struggling to get her produce into supermarkets. Freshly harvested, with a limited shelf life, the tomatoes really needed a home. Couldn’t they go directly to people?
Ever the entrepreneur, Wendy sold the crop through Shopify and the sisters’ WeChat group.
The exercise got her thinking – and reading – about food waste. Some 45% of fruit and vegetables in New Zealand is never harvested or goes straight into compost or, worse, landfill. Not because of a lack of taste, but due to their ‘imperfect’ size, shape, or colour. That’s 122,000 tonnes of good food worth over $1 billion rotting away and emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Apart from the environmental effect, there are social and economic social downsides too. Even though New Zealand grows enough food to feed 40 million people, one in five New Zealanders are experiencing food insecurity.
Those numbers did not add up for Wendy, who works as a senior insight specialist with a bank. It motivated her to start the charity “Perfectly Imperfect” during the second lockdown in August 2020. Two years later it’s an award-winning charity sending 150 boxes a week, with a growing network of distribution partners and 20 volunteers.
In the mystery boxes you can find black avocados next to bok choy with yellow leaves and carrots that are starting to decay.
“We don’t hide the imperfections. We proudly lay them out,” she says. “You can chop it off and eat the other half … The challenge is to find a new love for the product. It is food after all.”
But it’s food that would otherwise be thrown away.
Vege boom and bust
The first produce came from other growers in Pukekohe. Then Wendy saw an article about a zucchini farmer in Kerikeri who struggled with the shortage of labour and eventually quit harvesting.
“The next weekend, my whole family went up and harvested about 300 kilograms of zucchinis in half an hour.” Since then, she and a group of volunteers harvest from farmers and local growers in the Auckland region, Hawkes Bay and Gisborne. Whereas Perfectly Imperfect’s labour comes for free, the growers get paid. “We pay the grower for the tomato plant, the seedlings they buy, how much they spend to grow them. We want to reframe and get away from food waste. We’re actually recovering food resources.”
Apart from the resources to grow food, it takes labour to pack the produce and deliver it to markets. “In probably 80% of the time, the growers pack all the produce regardless of the differences in the grades (only grade 1 and 2-produce are taken by the supermarkets) and send it to floor markets and warehouses. It’s ready to sell, it’s perfect to sell. But for some reason it stays there. So every week we rescue food from them.”
In addition to the mystery boxes, Perfectly Imperfect is supported by the Kāinga Ora to run a community shop out of Mount Roskill’s Owairaka Community Hub. The store supplies whatever Wendy and her team rescue each week and operates on a “pay it forward” basis. “Pay it forward is another option of pay what you can. It gives people dignity.”
The suggested price is $15, no matter if you purchase vegetables for a family of five or as a single person. “It is not about the value of food but it is the value to support the mission. You pay the money and you also take care of the food.”
The business has exceeded Wendy’s expectations. “Every four minutes while we are open, we serve a family. Every week, we serve over a ton of food in that shop in just eight hours a week.” Perfectly Imperfect wants to have five more of the local, volunteer run shops by the end of the year.
Another outlet is the Gleaning Network Program which is focused on business innovations. For example, Perfectly Imperfect delivers gleaned cauliflower to the start-up KINDA to turn it into ice cream. “We can also turn 100 kilos of oranges, that would be hard to preserve, into 5 kilos citrus powder for the industry.
Wendy has high hopes for growth. “I want at least 120,000 members for Perfectly Imperfect. That’s 2.6% of the population of New Zealand, and every member could save the entire food waste of the year. We don’t need that big amount of people. Not everyone needs to take action, but small actions by only 2.6% of us would fund us to solve the problem. That’s how easy it is.”
She doesn’t see food waste as a problem so much as an opportunity. “There are solutions. People want to collaborate, it’s a happy ending. That’s why everyone is talking to me about food waste, it’s such a joy.”
Check out Perfectly Imperfect’s boxes here
Photo credits: Doris Neubauer
