Host: James McWalter
Guest: Jan Heinvirta | Co-Founder | Perfekto
Category: ☁️ Carbon Reduction
Podcast’s Essential Bites:
[0:16] “What we do at Perfekto is we aim to reduce food waste in Latin America. We do that by offering a subscription box of imperfect produce. So that means that weekly or biweekly you will get a box sent directly to your home, that includes fruits and veggies, that might look a bit odd, so maybe a bit bigger, a bit smaller than your usual produce at the supermarket or even out of shape, out of color. […] And that's what we offer […] since 54% of all fruits and veggies in the region end up wasted.”
[4:23] “A lot of restaurants were kind of reluctant as well to speak about food waste. Others who were willing to talk about it told us they already had solutions for it. So they donated it to the church [or] to people on the streets. […] So we essentially just decided to skip this Too-good-to-go part and go directly into the supply chain.”
[29:32] “We're not a marketplace model, like for example UberEATS […]. How it works is that you subscribe to Perfekto. You might pick a five kilogram box of fruits and veggies, you might want to choose what products you will have in that box and you’ll get them weekly to your door. […] We actually don't have an on-demand approach, we'd rather take a slow shopping approach. And that allows us to further reduce food waste, because by having this planned week, we know exactly the day before. […] And then [on the delivery day] early morning, our buyers go with our suppliers, buy what we need for that day, and then bring it to our fulfillment center, pick the boxes, and send it to the customer the same day. So that means in our model, essentially, we don't take a cut from […] and then we sell it to the higher price to cover costs.”
[31:58] “What happens with bananas that are not part of a bunch, but they're single [is that] they don't get sold to supermarkets, because supermarkets only buy bunches, because it looks better. […] So the banana sellers, for example, they always have a box ready with single bananas for us.”
[35:14] “We just raised our preseed, $600,000. With that, we also want to expand the team and to expand to a new fulfillment center as well. […] And then over the next year, we will certainly start our seed round within the next six months, so that we can raise money to go to the next one or two cities in Mexico. […] At the same time, we want to go from only offering produce to also offering other grocery items. […] A supermarket market might not accept the chocolate bar anymore, because it only has one month left of expiring until its expiry date. But it’s still one month […] and even after an expiry date, most chocolates are still fine.”
[38:40] “US funds [and] European funds were almost not interested in the region. And now this has completely changed. Now Latin America, Mexico is super hot. A lot of VCs are trying to get in. And that of course, helps the ecosystem in an incredible way, because there have been so many companies popping up. Now finally, a lot of unicorns and exits as well, which is helping the ecosystem grow.”
Rating: 💧💧
🎙️ Full Episode: Apple | Spotify
🕰️ 45 min | 🗓️ 01/18/2022
✅ Time saved: 43 min