T.T.: The Island of Misfit Produce

Now that I've gotten three different Misfits Market boxes--and, perhaps more importantly, actually took a photo of one--I feel like I can give a pretty honest review of the service*.

Here's how it works: First, you have to check if they deliver to you. I can't tell you how shocked I was when Jack's friend's mom told me she gets it. She lives waaaaay out there on a remote ranch, so if they deliver to her, the definitely deliver to me.

Then you sign up for an account. You can place orders within a three-day window. You can set it up to have a Google calendar notification (or another calendar--there are I think three options) when you can start "building" your box, and they'll also send an e-mail notification.

Then you start shopping. There are pantry items along with produce and other things. A $30 minimum is required to complete an order. Payment will be automatically charged to the card you provide when you sign up, but if you don't put $30 worth of stuff in your order, the order won't be completed and you won't be charged. There are no weekly fees or anything. You only pay for what you put in the box, and only if you hit $30.

You don't have to order every week, either, just whenever you want. I've been getting a box every two weeks.

The produce can be combined with a wide variety of pantry items to reach the $30 minimum for an order. There are also things like meats, seafood, and dairy, but those have a separate $30 minimum for what they call a "cold pack."

So! Those are the details. And here are the specifics of how it has worked for me.

I've ordered two boxes of just produce. (I haven't tried any pantry items yet.) The vegetables are, for the most part, not wrapped in anything, which I love. I hate having to buy vegetables wrapped in layers of plastic at the store. The Misfits box looks like the CSA boxes we used to get. Most of the vegetables are just kind of in there.

With the exception of things like those tomatoes.

The boxes themselves are very, very sturdy. The entirety of the order within the box is wrapped in a sheet of brown paper with shredded cardboard or something sandwiched between it, for insulation. I'm not entirely sure what the shredded stuff is in the middle of the paper layers, but I do know it's all entirely burnable. Or, if you live in a normal place where you don't burn things, recyclable. Each box has one ice pack in it, and the produce both times has arrived to me still cool and not at all wilted. Even the lettuce and beet greens.

The produce in general is very good quality (with the exception of the Very Sad Pineapple). The apples have had a couple of dings in them, but they haven't been soft or notably bruised, and they don't start to rot or anything. It's all lasted two weeks once I get it with no problem. All of the produce is listed as organic.

The box pictured above was $39.45, and contained a head of cabbage, four beets--two of which were the size of softballs--three cucumbers, a small bag of snow peas, two pints of grape tomatoes, two big heads of butter lettuce, six huge Fuji apples, one big head of broccoli, and a bunch of radishes. That's a pretty good haul of produce, and it will last us two weeks.

One person signed up using my referral code a few weeks ago--thanks, Martha!--and I decided to put my credit towards one of the "cold packs." I don't have a picture of that one, but it contained Parmesan cheese, frozen cod, and frozen shrimp. The seafood is all labeled wild-caught. It came packaged in a plastic insulating bag with two extra cold packs, and was still completely frozen when it arrived. I'm saving the seafood for Cubby's birthday and Lent, so I can't speak to the quality of it yet. 

The quality of everything has so far been much higher than the things available at our local stores. Which is a pretty low bar, to be honest, especially for produce.

So is it worth it? For me, that's an all-caps YES. Being over 100 miles from a store means that we are almost always very low on fresh produce, because we just don't go to the store that often. Misfits Market carries things I can't easily find even when we do go to the store. The quality is better than what I can find locally. The prices are very in-line with organic produce. And I really appreciate how they've tried very hard to limit the plastic in their packaging.

Basically, if someone had set out to create a service that perfectly solves a problem in my particular life, they couldn't have done a better job.

Is it worth it for you? Well, I don't know. If you live far from stores like me, almost certainly. Or if the stores you can get to don't routinely carry organic, wild-caught, or fair trade items, and that's important to you, this might be a good option. If you're trying to stay out of stores for whatever reason, then also yes. Only you can answer the question of whether it would make sense for you, but if any of the above circumstances apply to you, I definitely recommend it.

And if you do decide to try it, you can use this link for $10 off (and a $10 credit to me, hooray for more vegetables!).

A sight that never fails to make me happy. I hope it makes you happy, too.

* No, they are not paying me. But if you click on that link, it will use the referral code linked to my account, which will get your $10 off your order, and me a $10 credit.