Startup Spotlight #166: Perfekto

Perfekto is changing the food system in LATAM with the goal of reducing food waste in the region.

Oct 18, 2021

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I got the chance to speak with Anahí Sosa, co-founder and COO of Perfekto, about what she’s working on at her startup, and any advice she has for emerging entrepreneurs.

Perfekto reduces food waste through Latam’s first grocery subscription box with imperfect products from farm to table. These food items are usually thrown away due to cosmetic imperfections (size, cracks), short shelf-life (near expiration date), or other supply chain inefficiencies (labeling errors, surplus).

Perfekto sources their products directly from producers, manufacturers, and supply centers who are unable to sell such products through traditional channels (e.g. supermarkets, online grocery, restaurants). This way, the startup helps them turn waste into profit and reduce time and money spent on waste management.

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Startup Spotlight: Perfekto

Problem: One-third of all food produced in the world is wasted. In Latin America, 54% of all produced fruits and vegetables are wasted because of discrimination of food due to their aesthetics and oversupply.

Market: In Mexico, the produce market alone represents $8.4B and serves as our beachhead to create LatAm’s #1 brand for sustainable food and attack its $909B Grocery Market.

Solution: Our solution benefits the producer, as they increase their earnings, as well as the environment and the consumer. We offer a subscription box delivered conveniently to the customer’s doorstep allowing them to save time and money.

Team: We are 2 founders, Jan from Switzerland and Anahí from Mexico. We both saw the problem of food waste first hand, Jan working in restaurants as a student and Anahí seeing how her father, a citrus producer, faced the rejection of his products due to their physical appearance.

Recent Success:

Sosa: I am very proud of Perfekto for being the first one to challenge the absurd quality standards of the food industry. We have received comments from producers saying they have products that they just can’t sell at a fair price because of their cosmetic appearance. Getting this feedback directly from the producers has been key as a validation that there is indeed a problem of food discrimination embedded into the industry dynamics. Being able to help these producers has been one of the most rewarding experiences.

Recent Struggle:

Sosa: At the beginning, logistics were challenging due to our low volume of orders as we could not buy the minimum required directly from producers nor consolidate routes across the city. Particularly with these undervalued products, it is key to buy in large quantities so that producers find value in transporting them from the fields to the city. Little by little, we have been able to integrate more producers that got their products rejected due to their size, color, or form. Our focus is to keep expanding our community so that we get to buy larger quantities from many more producers.

Founder Advice:

Sosa: Don’t build anything too fancy at the beginning. We launched Perfekto with no-code tools and with a very hacky end to end experience, though it worked and it allowed us to prove our hypothesis that people was open to buying these kinds of products. Starting hacky, allowed us to quickly make changes to our experience based on our customers’ feedback and therefore get closer to product-market fit. The more resources you invest into a product launch, the harder it will be for you to make these minor changes to the original product.

Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:

Sosa: Here are three founders you should check out next!

Stacy Pavlyshyna, Founder of Awesomic: Awesomic matches subscribed companies with the vetted designers instantly to get design tasks done in 24 hours.
Anne Sophie, Founder of MicroMeat: Micro Meat develops technologies that allow cultivated meat producers to scale.
Pepe Akle, Founder of Okani: Okani is a low-cost health membership for the 50M Mexicans that spend 25B on healthcare out of pocket.

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