Support the local businesses series #2 GRIM
#2 GRIM
THE UGLIEST FOOD BOX IN TOWN
“We make subscription boxes filled with ugly-by-nature and surplus fruit & veg.
Always organic, always seasonal, never boring.”
During these times a lot of smaller businesses have suffered financial blows and undergo difficulty to adapt to the situation. Therefore oikos Copenhagen has started a series of #supportyourlocalbusiness posts where we share a Q&A with some of our favourite stores in the Copenhagen area who may have had to adapt their services. Our second shop is GRIM - a food box delivery service for rescued foods that are considered too “ugly” for the conventional stores to sell them.
Q&A
1) How did GRIM start out?
GRIM was founded by Petra from Finland and Carolin from Germany, who connected during a Master at Copenhagen Business School in Innovation and Entrepreneurship over their weird love for mushrooms, music and food. The duo has been working together since, researching sustainable food systems and even publishing a book chapter together on edible insects. In 2018, they founded GRIM and deliver food box subscriptions with ugly & surplus produce that would otherwise be wasted, but also supply food businesses with GRIM produce who want to make their sourcing more sustainable. Operations are partly volunteer-run, with a volunteer network of about 400 people - per week, 15 - 20 volunteers help GRIM with packing the boxes and quality checking.
2) Which SDGs does GRIM tackle and how?
#12 Responsible production & consumption
GRIM celebrates everything that is NOT norm-core by creating a new quality standard of what is edible. They do this by reintroducing imperfect-looking food, which would normally go to waste, back into our food value chain. Like this, GRIM shows us how tasty "ugly" can be and that imperfection is not representative of quality and tastiness of food. By doing so, more people can be fed without increasing the amount of food that is produced. The message: We have to consume smarter, not more!
#5 Gender Equality
To date, GRIM is an all-female team with 10+ hard-working women who want to show the very made-dominated food and tech industry that women can do it.
# 13 Climate action
At GRIM, packaging is kept at a minimum and the wooden GRIM boxes are re-used to the max.
#2 Zero hunger and sustainable agriculture
GRIM supports local and small farmers, and uses food that otherwise would go to waste, contributing to shifting the culture towards a zero food waste culture.
3) How is the COVID-19 crisis affecting your business (suppliers, delivery, volunteers etc.) and how have you adapted?
GRIM sells food boxes to private consumers, which have increased since COVID-19 because people rely more on home deliveries. However, most of their B2B customers are restaurants and canteens, which have now stopped ordering - causing a lot of adjusting to be done.
On the other end of GRIM are the farmers. As the company sources everything directly from farms, they know very well how the crisis is affecting our farmers. Due to the lack of immigrant work force that can help with harvesting, many items will remain unharvested in the fields - that goes together with thousands of tons of cancelled orders from the food service industry. Long story short: farmers are in big shit and really need every help they can get. This is why initiatives like GRIM are so important, because they can make sure to help farmers survive.
4) How can individuals support GRIM?
Supporting GRIM means supporting farmers and helping to fix our broken food supply chain - because broken it is, and Corona has just revealed its cracks. If you can, come on board and buy a GRIM box subscription box. In addition, you get to discover delicious fresh and always organic fruit and veg that will inspire your weekly cooking. GRIM also has recipes, so you might even learn a cooking skill or two. Plus, the boxes are super great to share with your flatmates!
To learn more about GRIM visit their website https://eatgrim.com/ or check out them out on Instagram @eatgrim
What do you think of GRIM and their business model? Do you have any other social businesses in mind that you would support? Comment below!