Since being founded in 2016, the company has delivered over 11.6 million boxes and rescued 6.5 million kilograms of wonky fruit and veg
Surplus veg box company Oddbox is celebrating 10 years of rescuing unwanted produce and tackling food waste.
The company sources fruit and vegetables from farmers that are either surplus or don’t reach supermarket standards. The produce is then curated into boxes based on customers’ preferences and delivered overnight to households across the UK.
Over the past decade, Oddbox has delivered over 11.5 million boxes to 574,391 households across the UK, rescuing over 140 varieties of fruit and veg – equivalent to 6.5 million kg of fruit and veg.
The company, initially launched under the name Tasty Misfits, was founded by Emilie Vanpoperinghe and Deepak Ravindran after a trip to Portugal, where the pair encountered a ‘wonky’ but tasty tomato. The experience prompted them to consider how misshapen produce could be prevented from going to waste.
The B-corp certified business has since grown to cover 70 per cent of the UK. Reflecting on its early beginnings, Vanpoperinghe said: “In the early days, we packed boxes in the church hall on our road in Balham, giving them fruit and veg in exchange.
“We donated produce to the local community fridge and met people who offered to help simply because they believed in what we were doing,” she added.
Oddbox has continued to expand its offering in recent years. In October 2024, it introduced its ‘Pick Your Own’ feature, allowing customers to swap out individual items in their delivery boxes for alternatives they preferred.
In 2025, the company launched The Market, an online add-on shop that provided a place for customers to buy sustainable food items and pantry staples such as loose refillables, jars and tins. In its first year, the initiative saved 260kg of plastic.
The company also works to ensure surplus produce is redistributed rather than wasted. At the end of each week, leftover fruit and veg is donated to FareShare for redistribution to charitable organisations. Oddbox also works with KIND in Liverpool and City Harvest in London, donating 146 tonnes of food to CityHarvest in 2025.
In June 2025, the company reached the milestone of 10 million boxes of rescued fruit and veg.
More recently, extreme weather has presented new opportunities to rescue produce that might have otherwise been rejected. During this summer’s heatwave the company rescued 6,000 heads of sunburnt cauliflower in a single week following increased demand for its buying services.
The company said it rescued 10 per cent more produce between January and July 2026, partly as a result of the heatwaves leading to increased crop rejections.
Vanpoperinghe said: “There has always been a wonderful sense of serendipity to Oddbox. We never set out with a grand plan to build a nationwide community.
“Ten years later, Oddbox has grown beyond anything we imagined, but that generous, resourceful community spirit is still at its heart,” she continued.
