While New Zealand’s autumn rain has ghosted veggie patches, leaving soils cracked and farmers cranky, one produce box biz is thriving off the chaos. Wonky Box, the cheeky veg rescue crew, is proving a dry spell doesn’t have to mean a food fail, especially when you’re in the business of bending the rules (and the carrots).
Source: Wonky Box
This season, the veg are weird. Parsnips are curling like they’ve been through a Pilates class, carrots are stuck in a permanent adolescent phase, and sprouts are going micro. Blame the bone-dry autumn for it as no rainfall means smaller, twistier, weirder crops. Supermarkets say “nah.” Wonky Box says “yes, please.”
Instead of rejecting the harvest for being off-spec, Wonky Box scoops up the imperfect, boxes it, and delivers it straight to your door, fresher, quirkier, and cheaper. And people are into it. Like, really into it.
In a time when climate’s unpredictable, prices are peaking, and supermarket veg is looking a little too perfect (and expensive), consumers are turning to the misfits. And Wonky Box is laughing all the way to the compost heap.
“We’ve seen a surge in demand,” says Wonky Box. “People get that flavour doesn’t come in a straight line.”
Source: Food © Guppyimages | Dreamstime.com - Wonky Vegetables
It’s part sustainability, part rebellion, and all common sense. Why waste a perfectly good curly parsnip just because it won’t win a beauty contest? Wonky Box is capitalising on this logic and the weather’s weirdness is only feeding their supply.
So while farmers worry and retailers nit-pick, Wonky Box is out here thriving. In a dry, cracked paddock of problems, they’ve found their niche, the deliciously wonky middle ground.
Ugly’s never looked so good.
ENDS:
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