Seconded: I would totally pay for 'ship this person an onion'
Grade your onions and sell the top 10% at a premium!
I sincerely believe that our society would be much happier and healthier if top-shelf/"celebrity" vegetables existed that could cost $XX, sort of like in Japan.
Someone would probably pay $1000+ for "The best dozen onions of the season"
It's the opposite that's a bigger problem, a lot of all fruit and vegetables are thrown away because they're not perfect looking.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/13/us-food-...
"You eat with the eyes first" is a common cross-cultural idiom. I'm not saying it justifies the waste, just that it's probably an evolved human behavior that we're stuck catering to. At least there is a counter-culture ugly produce movement right now.
I think that increasing the unit price of produce would reduce pressure on farmers to optimize for volume. A lot of the waste is a result farmers optimizing volume over nutritional quality because the market doesn't really have a place for "top-shelf" produce currently.
Vegetables can vary by an order of magnitude in nutritional density based on growing and harvest conditions. I wish there was a way to pay 10x for vegetables that are reliably 10x more nutritionally dense (as verified by laboratory analysis of random samples from every harvest).
My knucklehead friend, who I grew up with, keeps insisting I ship the onions in a heavy wooden crate, for aesthetic value. He says I could upsell that "value-add". I've yet to implement that idea.
I was thinking something more like handcrafted artisanal compost, extra row spacing, daily weeding and hand watering? Kobe-beef of onions.
What could make an onion beautiful enough to buy for $100/ea? If you made these, I bet you'd find a market in Japan. Could make a good gift for people who like cooking.
- Least expensive order is a 5-pound box for $34.95
- Runs on Shopify
- As they're seasonal, there are some built-in scarcity aspects I hadn't thought of (which is kind of neat business wise).
Two aspects I might try if this was my business:
1. Some kind of "Chef/Restaurant" option
2. An option to send 1 beautiful onion (ala the referenced Harry and David's)