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Evan Lutz of Maryland-based Hungry Harvest makes his pitch to the Shark Tank investors on Friday night’s episode. The company rescues ugly and surplus produce that might otherwise have landed in the landfill, and sells it to subscribers instead. It also donates a significant amount of produce to groups that feed the hungry.
Tyler Golden/ABC
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Tyler Golden/ABC
Evan Lutz of Maryland-based Hungry Harvest makes his pitch to the Shark Tank investors on Friday night’s episode. The company rescues ugly and surplus produce that might otherwise have landed in the landfill, and sells it to subscribers instead. It also donates a significant amount of produce to groups that feed the hungry.
Tyler Golden/ABC
TV is usually a place where the beautiful people shine. But tonight, it’s time for the uglies to step into the spotlight — ugly fruits and vegetables, that is.
Evan Lutz of Hungry Harvest, an organization that’s trying to turn uglies into a business, will appear on ABC’s Shark Tank show Friday night. He will try to sway the show’s deep-pocketed gurus to pour their money into Hungry Harvest’s model.
That model relies on rescuing apples, pears, potatoes and other crops that might otherwise have ended up as food waste and selling them to its subscribers in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia at a 20- to 30-percent discount. To be clear, this is produce that’s just as nutritious as its more beauteous counterparts. But because it fails to meet supermarkets’ beauty standards — usually because of quite minor cosmetic imperfections — it might otherwise have ended up in the landfill. Sometimes, perfectly fine-looking produce gets dumped, too, when farmers grow more than they can sell.
In fact, food waste is the single biggest source of waste in municipal landfills, according to the USDA, and it’s a major contributor of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. That’s why this fall, the USDA announced a national goal to reduce food waste by 50 percent by 2030.
As we’ve reported, businesses like Hungry Harvest that aim to fight food waste have been sprouting up recently. Lutz says the company has rescued about 300,000 pounds of produce, mostly from farms in Maryland and Virginia, since it was founded in May 2014. It’s donated about 100,000 pounds of that to groups that feed the hungry.
Right now, Hungry Harvest has about 600 subscribers. But Lutz tells us “we’re expecting to almost double that within the next week or so” in the wake of publicity from the show. Lutz says his pitch asked for a $50,000 investment — to be used mostly for marketing — in return for 5 percent of the company.
So, did he win? Lutz won’t say. Guess we’ll have to tune in to find out.