There is some very disingenous sounding hand-waving going on in this article - and it appears to have been successful! Most of the commenters here seem to have come away with the idea that the problem is that Imperfect Produce is taking food that would have otherwise gone to food banks. While the article never claims thus, I think the misunderstanding is intentional on the part of the author. The key point to me is this:
> Three years later and with a 30-percent drop in customers
and
> We lost customers, a lot of customers.
With a more careful reading, one can see that the "loss" to food banks is because BeetBox is not making as much money now that they have competition with better marketing. In fact the article even says as much:
> subscriptions have fallen so much we’ve had to cut back on many of the food justice programs that our CSA proceeds had previously supported.
Sounds a lot less like Imperfect Produce is an evil monster here, and a lot more like they're just a more succesful competitor.
> Three years later and with a 30-percent drop in customers
and
> We lost customers, a lot of customers.
With a more careful reading, one can see that the "loss" to food banks is because BeetBox is not making as much money now that they have competition with better marketing. In fact the article even says as much:
> subscriptions have fallen so much we’ve had to cut back on many of the food justice programs that our CSA proceeds had previously supported.
Sounds a lot less like Imperfect Produce is an evil monster here, and a lot more like they're just a more succesful competitor.