From the Shark Tank to Philly’s food bank

Beauty standards aren’t just something humans impose on one another. We expect our produce to be pretty, too. The result? Americans toss half of all the produce our farmers grow, mostly into landfills.

Yet, somehow, hunger is still a lingering problem. Baltimore-based social enterprise Hungry Harvest is trying to solve both by delivering damaged, edible produce to your doorstep. It announced its expansion to Philly shortly after landing $100,000 from Shark Tank investor Robert Herjavec last year.

As of this week, they’re finally delivering produce to Philly-area subscribers. But they changed up the model a bit.

For every package of produce Hungry Harvest delivers, one healthy meal is donated to a family in need. In Baltimore, those meals are delivered by the police department. In Philly,  Hungry Harvest will be donating “one to two pounds” of produce to food bank Philabundance.

“Right now, Philabundance is our main donation channel,” said Philly manager Cynthia Plotch, but that channel could diversify as the company expands its operations here. “We feel like we’ve successfully proven out this model in Philly and we’re ready to go full steam ahead.”

To celebrate their official launch (the company recently ran a beta test with 250 Philly-area customers), Hungry Harvest is doubling donations to Philabundance per order for the next month.

Plotch said the company expects the Philadelphia market to produce the same, if not better, outcomes as their work in D.C.

“People care about consciousness consumption here,” she said. “We think we fit in really well.”