Emilie Vanpoperinghe is the chief executive of Oddbox, a platform founded in 2016 that seeks to fight food waste by rescuing ‘wonky’ surplus fruit and vegetables from farms, and delivering them – in boxes – to customers’ doorsteps in select areas of the UK, including London, the South and the Midlands.
Initially launched as a side project, Oddbox came into its own during the COVID-19 pandemic, growing from 12,000 boxes to 30,000 boxes in three months, as supermarket supply chains struggled – providing both an outlet for farmers and an alternative for consumers seeking more sustainable choices.
“For us, profit and purpose have always gone hand in hand,” Vanpoperinghe explains. “Our whole model creates value from waste; rescuing food that would otherwise be lost.”
Early inspiration
The Oddbox journey began long before Vanpoperinghe, a former BT and 3M executive, entered the business world. Raised in northern France with grandparents who were potato farmers, she grew up understanding the effort involved in food production, and the imperfections that can arise in perfectly edible produce.
“I’ve always been quite connected to seasonality and knowing what grows when,” she says.
The idea for Oddbox emerged on a holiday to Portugal, when she visited local markets and encountered tomatoes with varied shapes, colours and surface marks that tasted good, despite their imperfections – produce that didn’t exist in UK supermarkets. Investigating why led her to discover the level to which cosmetic standards, retained for efficiency rather than regulation, drive vast amounts of food waste.
“I thought to myself, I can’t be the only one who actually doesn’t care about what these products look like,” she says. “So, Oddbox started as a side project alongside a full-time job I had at the time, in my neighbourhood in Balham, where I live, and it grew from there.”
Behavioural change
Today, Oddbox is a £30 million business, and Vanpoperinghe sees the company’s role expanding beyond waste reduction, and more towards behavioural change. Through Oddbox, consumers waste less food, eat more fruit and vegetables, explore greater variety, and reconnect with seasonality.
“Perfection doesn’t exist in nature,” she says. “We’re not only tackling food waste, we’re also building a movement and changing behaviours. What we say is that Oddbox represents a small step towards becoming more sustainable.”
As for the business case, Vanpoperinghe says that Oddbox views sustainability as a “growth driver, not a cost”, making decisions that are both good for business and for the planet.
“For example, we deliver overnight,” she says. “Delivering overnight means fewer vans in traffic, lower emissions, and lower costs. Sustainability can also be operational efficiency. These are efficiency levers, not CSR gestures, and they are a win-win in terms of financial and environmental sustainability.”
As she explains, the opportunity to create value from waste means that impact and revenue are intrinsically linked.
“The more impact we have, the stronger the business becomes,” she says “On the flip side, we can’t have impact unless we can exist and grow, so our impact relies on us being a financially viable business.”
Social purpose
Even as the business has grown, Vanpoperinghe says that Oddbox has remained true to the social purpose it was founded on.
“We measure everything by impact – how much food we rescue, how it supports growers, how it helps people eat better,” she says. “It’s part of every decision, not a separate project. And we make sure every team has both commercial and environmental goals.
“Our bonus scheme is based on four KPIs; one of which is sustainability. It sits right next to our EBITDA target. That means every team member is incentivised to deliver both profit and purpose.”
In 2020, Oddbox was certified as a B Corp business, achieving recertification in 2024. This recognition keeps the business accountable, she adds, helping Oddbox “formalise what we were already doing instinctively and make sure we keep improving. It also gives investors confidence that we’re building for the long term.”
Ten years into its journey, Oddbox has encountered its share of bumps in the road over the years – “Early on, we tried to do too much. Now we’re clear on what moves the needle, and we invest in that” – but Vanpoperinghe is confident that both the company’s business model, and the broader adoption of more sustainable business practices, are here to stay.
“I’m optimistic, because sustainability is finally part of business strategy, not just marketing,” she says. “What still needs work is accountability. We need more transparency and collaboration to make real, system-level change and we need strong government support alongside corporate action.”
Learn more about Oddbox at www.oddbox.co.uk.
