Sustainable Grocery Shopping Made Easy: Imperfect Foods Review + Promo Code

Note: this is not a sponsored post, and below contains my real thoughts and opinions about Imperfect Foods. If you choose to use my referral link, you will get a $10 credit and I will as well. Thank you for reading!

Many of us would probably like to be more eco-conscious in our choices. And while being vegan or vegetarian already has a significant positive impact on our carbon footprint, there are other things we can do to reduce this even more.

Some might include reducing our use of single-use plastic, learning how to properly recycle or walking more and driving less. But there’s apparently another option that you don’t even have to leave the house to use: Imperfect Foods.

Imperfect Foods is sustainable because it takes items that would normally go to waste–misshapen produce, crushed walnuts that were intended to be whole, or labels with misprints, just to name a few–and sells them to us via Imperfect Foods’ website.

If you aren’t super picky about some cosmetic flaws, Imperfect Foods might be a great way to shop green and also save some green!

My First Box

Being the thrifty guy that I am, I decided to approach Imperfect Foods from the angle of “how can I get as much as I can for my buck, yet also stretch it into a week of meals?”

So my total for the first box came to all of about $43. Now I don’t know about you, but especially in this economy, I feel like eating for five days for $43 isn’t all that terrible.

Here are all the ingredients I ended up getting for the week:

Now I will say this: I may have just caught the shop on a bum week, but I don’t exactly feel like the prices of produce were anything to write home about. I know I’m a bit of a thrifty person to begin with, but this is just my take.

You could argue that the convenience of having it delivered straight to your door is definitely a perk, and if you shop with a careful eye you can probably find some satisfactory enough buys.

Here’s some price comparisons of similar items that could be found on Walmart’s website, including their delivery fee for non-Walmart+ members:

Given this, we save a little green by going with Imperfect Foods (not to mention, we get some beautiful seasoned mushroom steaks instead of the bag of Beyond Beef Tips).

And if being more sustainable is a perk on your checklist, we get that with Imperfect Foods as well.

My Meal Plan

So one of my goals with this was to see if I could stretch a box from Imperfect Foods to cover an entire week (or at least five days) of meals. Here’s how I broke down my ingredients to feed myself for five days:

Breakfast: Forager Cashewmilk Yogurt + cubed cantaloupe

Lunch: Eat Meati Carne Asada Steak + one Atoria’s Multigrain Naan

Dinner: Colavita pasta + Impossible Sausage + marinara + vegan parmesan

On day five, lunch had to be another serving of pasta rather than the steak + pita. I also found myself being a little hungry and snackish following this plan. However, if your goal is to craft basic main meals and shop snacks elsewhere, I felt like this was pretty solid.

Pros and Cons

I thought that there were a lot of positives with my experience with Imperfect Foods. Firstly, I enjoy the fact that there was a large selection of organic, natural and plant-based foods offered.

There were several items offered (like the Eat Meati vegan steaks, for example) that I have never seen in stores near me before.

The fact that the ingredients were delivered straight to my door is a great perk, especially if you happen to be a busier person.

Frozen and refrigerated items are shipped with a cold pack to ensure they stay at appropriate temperatures, and they waive your cold pack fee if you reach a certain threshold.

The environmental impact (or lack thereof) of shopping with Imperfect Foods is another wonderful thing to consider. By purchasing ingredients with small cosmetic imperfections that would otherwise go to waste, you’re doing good by the planet as well.

However, I would say there are negatives to Imperfect Foods as well. I prefer to shop on the thriftier side anyway, and that didn’t change with my approach to Imperfect Foods.

Many of the ingredients on their website are the same, if not a bit pricier, than you might find at your local grocery store. You may find yourself getting ripped off if you don’t shop carefully.

I’m never crazy about order minimums anyway, mainly because I don’t want to be forced to pick out more items than I want in order to meet a quota.

Imperfect Foods does have a $35 order minimum, and though it was not a huge problem for me to meet that minimum, I just thought it was worth mentioning.

Final Thoughts

All that being said, I actually did enjoy my experience with Imperfect Foods very much. They offer discounts and promos to new subscribers, which is what drew me to it at first.

Bottom line, the opportunity to try new vegan foods and save cosmetically flawed items from being discarded are very cool notions to me. And hey, I ate for five days for about $43. As mentioned earlier, I don’t think that’s half bad these days.

If you’re interested in giving Imperfect Foods a try, I can help you save some green on your first box! Follow my referral link to save $10 off your first box (I’ll also get a credit for referring you). Cheers!

I hope you found this post helpful! Whether you’re vegan or plant-based, or if you’re just looking for a more sustainable way to shop, Imperfect Foods may be a solution for you.

Be well, and until next time, peace 🙂