WILLOUGHBY HILLS, Ohio — Since the pandemic began, a lot more people have been cooking and eating at home. This trend is having a huge impact on a local business leading to booming sales.
“It's been an exciting year for us," Ashley Weingart, the founder and owner of Perfectly Imperfect said.
Perfectly Imperfect is a fruit and vegetable delivery subscription service aimed at reducing food waste. The business buys slightly imperfect food from local farms and delivers them in a box right to your front door. To date, they've purchased and rescued more than 2,000,000 pounds of produce and donated more than 200,000 pounds of produce to local food banks.
"Around this time last year our sales multiplied by five over the course of just a few weeks - as people were looking for new ways to get food delivered to their home safely, especially fresh, healthy food. And we’ve been able to maintain that growth and keep many of those customers around the past 12 months," the owner said.
The growth is leading to a new product line called Diced and Easy, which just rolled out weeks ago.
“This in part came out of the COVID epidemic," Weingart said.
Diced and Easy are pre-prepped meal kits, featuring all local fruits and veggies. It's a service Weingart said is taking off as more and more people head back to the office.
“It saves you a lot of time and energy on a busy work and school night getting dinner on the table faster," she said.
But like so many businesses out there, they've had their issues.
"It has been a struggle for us to find people who are interested in working," Weingart said.
Weingart said it's not been tough just finding a workforce, it's also keeping those employees around.
"It’s definitely been a struggle for us to keep as many people here as we need to manage the packing and the process that we follow every week," she said.
Luckily just after our interview, Perfectly Imperfect was able to have all open positions filled. Weingart said she's hopeful their competitive wages are enough for folks to stick around and work for a company whose mission is to improve access to fresh, healthy food.
"So it's not an easy job, but we have a lot of fun and we have a real team atmosphere where people believe in the mission that we're all about."
If you want more information about Perfectly Imperfect, click here.
