Misfits Market's New Features Will Fill Your Cart For You
Misfits Market, a grocery subscription box service that specializes in organic and ugly produce, has announced a new feature for its customers. According to FoodPrint, 20 billion pounds of produce are lost on farms each year. This is before the food even ships out to stores, restaurants, and homes. FoodPrint cites that the reasons for food waste at farms include overplanting, poor weather, and pest disruptions. Other contributing factors include buyers who are more reluctant to buy produce that is considered ugly and market downturns that causes farmers to simply not harvest their produce. So, finding buyers for ugly produce will at least lessen the amount of waste (per FoodPrint). That is where the loyal customers of Misfits Market step in.
Regular customers of the online market will start seeing an emphasis on saving time and money while having more of the products that they love with preselected recommendations in their online basket. Kai Selterman, Misfits Market's chief strategy officer, explained to Grocery Dive that most shoppers buy the same foods each week. Now those items will be chosen before the customer has to navigate various pages to assemble their weekly grocery list. Moreover, a discovery feature will look at previous purchases to suggest items that you haven't bought previously but might enjoy. Customers can remove any of the pre-selected items from their cart before heading to checkout, select certain items to be banned from ever being recommended, and even disable the feature entirely.
But wait there's more!
June didn't just see Misfits Market's plans to add an automatic curation feature to its online shopping experience; it also improved its user experience by introducing a loyalty program. All pre-existing customers as well as new ones were enrolled in Misfits Perks in mid-June, according to Path to Purchase IQ. Every dollar spent on a purchase with Misfits Market's weekly subscription nets you 2 points. You can store these points indefinitely or redeem them via your Misfits Market account.
Misfits Market gave examples of what you can get for these points in the blog post announcing the new system. For example, 250 points will get you five dollars off on your next order. Other rewards include getting a free everyday item, a free premium item, and various scaled up versions of these three prizes. The everyday gifts seem to consist of produce aisle goods while premium ones net you nuts, Manuka Honey, or coffee. "We wanted to incorporate free gifts as part of this because sometimes customers... want that nudge to try something new without having to spend the money on trying it," Selterman told Grocery Dive.
Between having one's regular orders remembered and rewards for shopping as you would anyway, Misfits Market makes having its membership contribute to reducing food waste even easier.