As our website is in Dutch, we would love to give you a small peek into what we do with this short introduction. If you need more information or just want to have a chat, please let us know.
Food waste
According to research, 30 to 50% of all the food in the world is thrown away. How is that possible?! Let’s take a look at the facts:
- Worldwide we waste 1.3 billion tons of food: that’s one third of the entire food production.
- At the same time, 1 billion people worldwide are in need of food. And the world population continues to grow to more than 9 billion people by 2050.
- Almost half of all the food that is wasted, is made up by fruit and vegetables.
Wonky fruit and veggies
One major reason of why fruit and vegetables are wasted is because of the extreme focus on aesthetics. About 10-20% of fruits and vegetables gets wasted because of looks. This can partly be explained by past EU legislation that restricted the sale of “wonky” fruit and veggies. However, after 2009 the law became less strict. Still these wonky veggies and fruits hardly ever make it to the shelves. It seems like we got used to the “perfect quality”. So that is where Kromkommer comes in!
The story of Kromkommer
Kromkommer (a Dutch wordplay on the words cucumber and crooked) was founded in 2012 by Jente, Lisanne & Chantal with the mission to save all the fruits and veggies that otherwise would be thrown away because of their appearance or overproduction. Instead of ending up in the bin these wonkies should end up on someone’s plate! We believe in a world without waste and strive for equal rights for all vegetables and fruits. To be able to make this mission work we have to change the whole system and work towards a new definition of quality.
The Krommunity
We believe that you can never make big change happen on your own. Therefore we work with our community, that we call the Krommunity. The Krommunity consists of farmers and growers, stores, retailers and fans. Together we can do big things and make change happen. Because we believe in the power of our Krommunity, we use crowdfunding as a tool to launch our products.
Together with the Krommunity we want to make as many people as possible fan of wonky. Curious how? Let’s have a look…
We love campaigns!
We want to share our love for wonky fruit and vegetables with as many people as possible. We do that with our products, but also with inspiring campaigns. For example, we celebrated the Bijna Waste Geweest Feest (a bit hard to translate, but let’s say “The save- the-almost-waste-party”) where we rescued 10.000 kilo’s of crooked veggies and fruits that otherwise would turn into waste in one day. You could also find us at the Pride Amsterdam with cute, small plums, because “Size doesn’t matter”! We opened the first Wonky Vegetable and Fruit Store in the country and hosted a wonky fruit and vegetable museum at Mysteryland. In 2018 we focused our wonky powers on politics and the European trade norms and made these a priority of our minister of agriculture. You can read our vision on this topic here.
Wonky veggie soup
In January 2014 we started a crowdfunding campaign in order to make our dream come true: to bring wonky veggies back to the consumer with our own product line. In two months 865 wonky lovers contributed €31,765! And that was enough to start the production of nine wonky veggie soups. Since 2020 we do not produce soup anymore as we decided to focus on other projects such as our wonky toys, an education project for schools and a book for kids.
#wonkytoys
It is our goal to not exist anymore. Because if we do our job right, all wonky fruit and vegetables end up on the supermarket shelves and not in our products. But, we’re not there yet! That’s why we took the next step and developed a wonky fruit and vegetable play set together with sustainable toy brand PlanToys. With these toys, we want to reach as many kids as possible and teach them about wonky produce. We launched the set with a crowdfunding campaign in the Netherlands in October 2018. And we’re also bringing the wonky heroes to the attention of little kids in the rest of the world! Since March, 2019, the wonky fruit and vegetable play set is available for sale in all PlanToys countries worldwide. Go to plantoys.com to find where you can purchase a wonky playset nearby.
Do you want to join us in our mission for equal rights for all veggies and fruits? Join our Krommunity!