The Inglorious Fruits Fix: How Intermarché Turned Ugly Produce Into the Discerning Choice

Intermarché dissolved the tension between wanting to reduce food waste and not wanting to sell shoppers something that looks second-rate, by making the imperfect product the hero rather than the consolation prize.

The challenge it solved for Intermarché: How do you change an ingrained shopping habit that wastes food at scale, without making shoppers feel judged or asking them to accept a lesser product?

Give the rejected option its own identity, name, and visible price logic so choosing it feels like discernment rather than compromise.

In March 2014, French supermarket chain Intermarché launched Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables, created with agency Marcel Paris. It bought misshapen produce that growers normally discard, gave it a dedicated aisle with named characters, the Grotesque Apple, the Failed Lemon, the Ridiculous Potato, and sold it at a 30% discount. In-store soups and juices made from the same produce let shoppers taste the proof.

In the first two days of the pilot in Provins, stores sold an average of 1.2 tons of inglorious produce per store and saw a +24% overall store traffic increase. After one month, the campaign reached over 13 million people in France. The idea was so successful that Intermarché rolled it out across all 1,800 stores, and competitors Auchan and Monoprix launched similar initiatives.

This principle is available right now in Indian grocery retail, where regional and seasonal produce varieties get quietly buried behind uniform imported options. It applies equally to budget airline seating tiers, where the no-frills option is priced as an apology rather than a rational choice. And it fits D2C food brands working with native grains or heirloom varieties that currently sit on shelves without a name, a story, or any frame that tells a shopper why choosing them is the smarter move.