'Wonky’ fruit and veg proves so popular we're expanding range
15 June 2016
Our Perfectly Imperfect range of ‘wonky’ fruit and veg is proving a huge hit with our customers, so we’re expanding it.
Back in 2013 we announced our ambition to lead in reducing global food waste and set out our responsibility to tackle the issue from farm to fork. We have introduced a number of initiatives that we believe will make a big difference.
One of those initiatives is our new Perfectly Imperfect range, which we launched earlier this year. It’s a big help for our suppliers because it gives them the confidence that we can take much more of their crop, maximising the amount of fresh produce that we can sell in our stores to our customers at low prices. Perfectly Imperfect apples have increased the amount of crop we can take to 97%, while our Perfectly Imperfect strawberries mean we can take 95%.
We’ve been amazed by just how popular the range has been with our customers. It’s been flying off the shelves - we launched with just parsnips and potatoes, but since then we’ve responded to our customer’s demands and grown the range to include strawberries and apples too.
We’ve just launched Perfectly Imperfect cucumbers and we’ll be adding courgettes to the range from next week. We need to stay flexible and take volumes of the lines when supplies occur, which means our store distribution will vary from product to product and from week to week.
Thanks to increased customer awareness and the increased amount of Perfectly Imperfect produce on sale at Tesco stores, sales volumes of the range are ten times bigger now than when it was first introduced.
This is good news for our customers, good news for our suppliers and great news in the fight against food waste. The popularity of our Perfectly Imperfect range just goes to show that our customers love great quality produce at low prices. We’re proud of the work we’ve done in this area and we’ll keep doing more to help customers to buy great quality, healthy produce at affordable prices.