In this episode of This Is Ag!, Hilary Craig, Director of Produce Category Management at Misfits Market, joins me to explore the connection between agriculture, sustainability, and the people who eat the food farmers grow. Hilary shares how her work helps connect growers with consumers by finding a market for quality produce that may be overlooked because of cosmetic imperfections. From scarred blueberries to unusually shaped fruits and vegetables, the conversation explores how our expectations of perfect-looking produce contribute to food waste and how education and storytelling can help change that. Together, we discuss the importance of understanding where our food comes from, appreciating the work and relationships behind every piece of produce, and choosing flavor and quality over appearance. We also look ahead at the future of agriculture, where technology can help reduce waste, but the human connection to food, farming, and one another remains irreplaceable.
In this episode of This Is Ag!, Hilary Craig, Director of Produce Category Management at Misfits Market, joins me to explore the connection between agriculture, sustainability, and the people who eat the food farmers grow.
Hilary shares how her work helps connect growers with consumers by finding a market for quality produce that may be overlooked because of cosmetic imperfections. From scarred blueberries to unusually shaped fruits and vegetables, the conversation explores how our expectations of perfect-looking produce contribute to food waste and how education and storytelling can help change that.
Together, we discuss the importance of understanding where our food comes from, appreciating the work and relationships behind every piece of produce, and choosing flavor and quality over appearance. We also look ahead at the future of agriculture, where technology can help reduce waste, but the human connection to food, farming, and one another remains irreplaceable.
Misfits Market: https://www.misfitsmarket.com
Kirti Mutatkar, President and CEO of UnitedAg: Reach me at kmutatkar@unitedag.org, www.linkedin.com/in/kirtimutatkar
UnitedAg - www.unitedag.org
UnitedAg Health and Wellness Centers - https://www.unitedag.org/health-benefits/united-agricultural-benefit-trust/health-centers/
Episode Contributors - Hilary Craig, Kirti Mutatkar, Dave Visaya, Mickayla Ursini
The episode is also sponsored by Brent Eastman Insurance Services Inc. - https://brenteastman.com
Blue Shield of California - https://www.blueshieldca.com
Elite Medical - https://www.elitecorpmed.com
Gallagher - https://www.ajg.com/
SAIN Medical - https://sainmedical.com/
MDI Network - https://www.mdinetworx.com/about-us
Kirti: [00:00:04] Good morning Hilary. This is super exciting to have you on This Is Ag.
Hilary: [00:00:09] Good morning. I'm so excited to be here. I'm looking forward to chatting with you.
Kirti: [00:00:14] So this is exciting. One of our, so our director of marketing or communications was at a conference and I think she met with you and she was so impressed with how you look at what you do from a sustainability standpoint, innovation standpoint. So she reached out to me and said, you need to have Hilary on This Is Ag. And that's how this happened. So Hilary Craig, your position, it says director of produce category management at Misfits Marketing. That's a little bit of a mouthful. And it's like it is. I have a lot of listeners. I am, I'm the CEO and president at United AG. And the reason behind this is I want to educate people about agriculture and what we do, right? Even people in Ag or outside Ag. There are so many misconceptions, so many things that people have perceptions and all that. So This is Ag is to kind of help educate our people in ag and outside Ag. So from your title, what does that mean to somebody who might not really understand what that title means and what you do on a day to day basis.
Hilary: [00:01:25] Yeah, yeah, it is a mouthful. And sometimes when I'm telling people, I just shorten it to, you know, director of produce. But my role is really managing a team of category managers who all have different commodities on their desk. So we've got four category managers and they each manage, I don't know, maybe 40 different items right now depending on the time of year that goes big or smaller. And so the kind of decisions that we're making are what are we going to buy? When are we going to offer it? Who's it going to come from? What are we going to sell it for? How do we want to sell it? And like, just really, our whole goal is connecting with farmers and growers and finding out like, what do you need from us? Like, what do you have that's amazing that we should be selling and let's work on it from there. So it's a long title for basically people who put together a produce department online.
Kirti: [00:02:21] So you are connecting the growers and the consumers, right? So you're the connection of that and you are in a way telling the story of the growers, right? And why we should be buying what we buy.
Hilary: [00:02:34] Yeah. Actually, that's my favorite thing about what we do is being that's like exactly what I was looking for in produce is this kind of intermediate role where we get to connect growers. And instead of calling someone a consumer, I'm going to call them an eater. Yeah, we're all eaters, right? So I think just like grabbing those two people and getting them together is so important. And we have this really incredible platform to be able to do it because we are a digital experience. We have a little bit more time to tell the story than you would get in a traditional retail setting. So that's exactly how I think of it, is being able to share the stories that the grower has directly with the people that are eating their food, and in turn, to be able to share the feedback that the people eating the food have back up the ladder with the growers and let them know, like they love this or gosh, they wish this was a little easier to cook or, you know, all those kinds of things.
Kirti: [00:03:30] So that was super interesting. What is your story? Why did this attract you? Why are you doing what you do today?
Hilary: [00:03:39] I definitely, I thought I was going to be a rock star. That was goal number one. But you have to have talent for that. No, but I you know, I wound up probably 25 years ago or so, I wound up just needing full time work, and I got a job in a natural foods store in our area. I'm in Baltimore, DC area, got a job with a newly launched independent natural foods store, and I was kind of working on the grocery refrigerated, frozen side of the business. And one day we had an immediate need for a produce manager. And my boss was like, get over there, kid. And so I did. And I was terrified because I didn't know anything about produce. I really didn't know anything about food before I started at this store. And it's one of these things where I just fell into it and I just loved it. I just loved working with produce, everything about it, like the variety of the items. I mean, I had my first avocado. My family was not a big like fruit and veggie. We were not very adventurous. It's an iceberg lettuce kind of girl, but I finally got to try a tomato and tasted a tomato that was really delicious from a local grower. So I spent about 18 years working for that company in a variety of capacities, most of that time in produce, and worked with a lot of regional local farmers.
Hilary: [00:05:06] And I became a little bit it would make me sad the amount of produce that we would wind up wasting or calling for purely cosmetic reasons. People shop with their eyes. And particularly at that time, there was just this kind of concept that if it didn't look perfect, it wasn't going to be delicious. And so we had outlets for all of that. And, you know, we donated plenty of food or it would go to farmers or compost places, but it still didn't feel good, especially as I began to visit farms and see how much work went into growing this produce to begin with, and how many people are involved in every piece of produce that lands in a store. So over time, I, I really wanted to get a little bit closer to the growing side of the industry and imperfect foods opened up in our area in 2018. And that just seemed like a great time for me to branch out and get into that side of the business. And of course, over time, imperfect was acquired by misfits in 2023, and that was very natural progression. So yeah, it's kind of been a long journey with a lot of learning along the way.
Kirti: [00:06:26] Yeah. You actually touched on a few things that I've kind of consistently come across. One is we as consumers or eaters don't really understand where our food comes from. And really, I think you and I being in the industry now, right? We get it. We understand it. We pick the right food to eat. But there is so much of like, not having the understanding out there of actually where the food comes from. So for example, this is a really, really funny story. I kind of told you earlier why This Is Ag started. So we were at one of our member companies and they had cauliflower, the full cauliflower sitting on, you know, they were processing units and then the flowers that you get. So one of our team members, he saw that full flower head and he looked at it and he said, what is that? So somebody said, that's how the cauliflower looks. So for him, he was like, oh, but in Trader Joe's, when I buy cauliflower, it looks like those small flower heads. So in his mind, all these years, he's never known that cauliflower is this big cauliflower. And the flower heads are the flower heads, right? So this is an amazingly smart individual like our executive person who's grown up like this in Orange County. So there is a lot of that happening. So do you come across things like that?
Hilary: [00:07:56] Oh yeah. All the time. I mean, I, gosh, I love telling people things about produce. I just kind of like blowing their mind. It's so much fun. And people really like knowing they, you know, I think people get excited by finding wonder and something that they just haven't thought about ever. When I first came into produce, if someone had asked me, where are bananas grown, I probably would have told you like, oh, California, you know, like I had no idea. I just, I never, ever connected the food on my plate with like where it actually came from and when it went through. I think that's something that people love hearing about. Even something like something that comes up probably once a year, I would say is broccoli will get this purplish cast to it when it gets cold outside and people are like, oh, what's that? Like, what's going on? Why is my broccoli look funny? And even just that story is really fun. Like, oh, that's what the plant does when it gets cold and like, you know, produces these different colors and has a different visual look at different times of the year. Yeah, we, we spend a lot of time talking about that kind of thing.
Kirti: [00:09:03] Yeah. We have one of our members up called lemon and the CEO is, he said, my excitement or my goal in life to say how, where lemons come from and the whole processing and how, how the process goes through that right, is amazing. But the thing that you kind of said, the purple broccoli or things that don't look cosmetic, it doesn't look the way we expect it to look and how we react to that as human beings and don't buy it. Do you feel that the growers kind of we as consumers and eaters are training our growers to grow the food a certain way because we are saying, okay, purple broccoli, not good. Maybe that is really good, but we are training or we are because of the consumer market or the people who are eating the stuff. We are kind of impacting how the growers grow. And that results in, like you said, the food wastage and all the things that happen with that. Is that kind of our issue more than the growers issue?
Hilary: [00:10:10] It is interesting because yeah, there is that dynamic, right, of, of growers certainly are working on thin margins and cannot afford to make costly mistakes because they've put a lot of, you know, they put so much work and money into growing the product to begin with, much less harvesting shipping. And so I think that they've responded to the feedback from customers that, wow, sales really dip when something looks like this. And so we have kind of given that feedback to them. I have found that we've actually really needed to be very vocal with our growers about like, hey, call me if you're dumping something. I want you to just like think about, I wonder if misfits could take in like, we had a recent situation where a grower had a whole field of blueberries that had been really scarred by wind, rubbing the berry on the limb of the tree. And so the surface of the blueberry was quite scarred and not super attractive from a traditional standpoint. And it almost didn't occur to them that there would be an outlet for it. And I'm so glad they gave us a call because we were like, yeah, harvest it. Like, we'll buy all of it, we'll sell it, we'll tell the story. And we find that as long as folks understand what's happening, they're very flexible and accommodating. And I think kind of enjoy knowing a little bit about that, you know?
Kirti: [00:11:32] Yeah, it's, the education part of it. And it's like, you know, it just reminded me of something, you know, sometimes those imperfections that you have. Right. And I'm now going a little deeper, maybe spiritual, but the imperfections make it more beautiful. So you were talking about the blueberries and then I was imagining it. That's the journey of the blueberry. And when you eat it, you're going to taste that. And that is the whole world out here is imperfect. We all imperfect in a way. And there's beauty in imperfections. That's what I was thinking. But I went off on a tangent there. So as your role and what you do at misfits, right? How do you overcome that? I mean, there's this when you think of food and wastage of food, what is that number? It's like huge, right? We waste a lot of food because of imperfections. Isn't that true?
Hilary: [00:12:27] Yeah, it's pretty significant. I think the, I think the most recent numbers that I've heard are about a third of the food that is in the food system in the United States is wasted. And that's definitely not just like coming from farms. That's the whole food system. So that's like the food that we throw out in our homes. That's food that maybe doesn't get harvested, or food that does get harvested and spoils out, or it's kind of all of that, but it's a massive amount. I think it's a little harder to get specifics on how much of that could have been sold or was not sold because it had specific cosmetic challenges. But I mean, there's so there's so much of it. It's pretty, pretty significant. I will say the good news is it is going down even from, I believe, 2021, that number was higher, closer to like 35%, I believe. So we're definitely making progress and not insignificant. Yeah.
Kirti: [00:13:25] So kudos to you for doing that. So what is your biggest surprise when you are. So you are connecting the grower. Like for example, this blueberry example that you gave and the person eating it or the consumer, right? So how does that look? Is there education around that? So if I get those blueberries, is there is it a pricing difference? Is that why would I be incentivized to get your blueberries versus somebody else's?
Hilary: [00:13:53] Yeah. I think often there is a pricing incentive. It's a little complicated because depending on the grower, it costs them as much to harvest something that's ugly as it does objectively ugly as it does to harvest something perfect looking. So we try to thread that needle pretty well and give the grower a really fair return for their product, but also give customers, yeah, an incentive to buy something that looks a little bit different than they're used to. So we do try to offer a discount on anything that we would consider to be imperfect. And that can range, you know, from like 20% to as much as 50% depending on the time the all the different pieces of info we have at that moment in time. And then I think telling the story is we do that in a couple of ways. One is on the site itself. We have an imperfection reason next to any item that has an imperfection. So it could be, oh, this has scarring, this is too big, too small, its surplus. And if it's something that's really visually, we think could be a little visually alarming to someone, we will always do some type of social post or even sometimes like a follow up email that says like, oh, we're so excited that you bought this item. Let us tell you a little bit more about what an impact your purchase had on the grower. And it gives us a chance to just kind of explain again, in a little bit more detail what that story is so that, you know, they don't have that shock moment where they're like, oh, what the heck.
Kirti: [00:15:20] Do you feel? It's American consumers who need everything to look perfect. Because I say that because I am from an Indian ethnicity and a lot of people, when they come visit me from India and they're very surprised to see how we are. All the lemons are perfectly sized and perfectly like the same color, same everything. You have the strawberries and everything. And then they sometimes say the produce in India tastes sweeter and fresher because it has more imperfections, and we feel that feels closer to them, that that's the real vegetables and whatever. And here it feels too perfect to be. Then they say the taste is impacted. Do you see that? Do you kind of see it's a is it a American consumer issue?
Hilary: [00:16:09] I do think so. Yeah. I growing up, I lived in a couple different places. My family moved quite a bit. And so I lived in England and Germany and we traveled a lot when I was younger. And I agree, I think our producer is very. Yeah, it does. It does tend to.
Kirti: [00:16:24] We need everything to be perfect. We need everything to be. Yeah. Looking a certain way and being perfect. Yeah.
Hilary: [00:16:31] And I also agree about the flavor comment too, because I think because of that feedback loop that we've given growers by our sales dollars, there's been times when we've chosen to grow specific varieties for yield or efficiency or looks rather than flavor. And so I do think there are some cases where we could be buying a way more flavorful cherry tomato or something, but it doesn't look as good by the time it reaches the final destination. And so maybe that's sort of a less common variety. Yeah, I do think that's something that we see.
Kirti: [00:17:09] What is what is one of the biggest surprise you kind of when you came in to act 25 years ago, right? I mean, you've grown and being in this industry, is there anything that was surprising to you? For me. I mean, let me hear I'll tell you what was my biggest surprise when I came in, but I would I'm curious to see if you had anything that stood out for you.
Hilary: [00:17:33] Mm. I think the one big one and that I also hear a lot from people who are just starting to learn more about Ag is that it feels like produce is too cheap, given everything that goes into it. I think I hear I hear a lot, you know, I thought that first when I heard about bananas and how much how much work goes into a banana. And I'm like, we're selling this guy for like less than a dollar, you know, so many people. And I hear that quite a bit that like, if people knew everything that goes into their food, I think they would expect it to be a little pricier than it is now. Obviously, this is not necessarily a time when folks feel like food is cheap. I think everybody feels like things are quite expensive, but that was a big surprise to me. Just the sheer amount of work that goes into every piece of produce that you touch.
Kirti: [00:18:22] Yeah, yeah, that that is so true. It's like the widget creating. You go back and you kind of look at the man hours and the amount of everything goes into it. It is, it takes a lot to do it. And it's a low margin business. And California also has a lot of regulation and all that stuff that adds to the cost to the grower. And so it is a hard industry. And for me, the surprising part for me, since I run a health plan, right? So this is an industry that provided health insurance before it was mandated to be provided. Right. But more importantly, I find if I would have been a corporate. So I live in Orange County, have a finance degree, I would have easily gone into some other industry. I accidentally came into agriculture 20, 25 years ago, slightly more. Right. And for me, the reason I continue to stay, and the reason this feels more a passion than work is because it is such a human business. It's such a relationship and human. It's like things still happen over a handshake. We are in the world of AI and all that, and it's still so much about relationship. It's so much about family, it's so much about connection. And for me, that is I keep saying I want to run my business as a spiritual practice. And I feel that's what this is all about, right? We are touching human beings. And with what you do at misfits and now understand why Maribel was attracted to you when she talked to you. That's exactly what you're doing, right? That that you see so many of these stories in the agricultural industry.
Hilary: [00:20:03] So yeah, I totally agree. I think I mean, I do think that's one of the most exciting things about working in this industry is It is so relationship oriented. And I also just think food is inherently this really beautiful part of life that just I was talking to someone recently about, you know, with. Oh gosh. AI and tech and kind of the automation of our lives. It's so exciting to me to be in the food space because I'm like, oh, that's not getting automated anytime soon. You're not going to automate the experience of sitting down at a table with other people and having great conversation and great food. And that is at the heart of Ag, like the amount of farm tours that I've been on where someone opens their home or their packing shed or their break room, and you sit down and have a lovely meal where you get to just enjoy getting to know one another and eating the, you know, the fruits of literally their labors.
Kirti: [00:21:04] Exactly.
Hilary: [00:21:05] Yeah. That's beautiful.
Kirti: [00:21:07] And you would not know. And you realize that some of these people are amazingly successful and in the corporate world and how they would be. And in the ag world, these are real people. This is when you sit down and have that meal and you realize the net worth, you're like, what? And the same thing could happen in like somewhere else. You realize that's a very different thing, right? So it's because at the core of we all, like you said, it's like this is sustaining us. This sustains us. You're right with AI and stuff, this is going to be even more important because we are feeding. I mean, this is our body and soul that we feed through Ag so yeah. Yeah, that's so true. So have you seen any innovation that's. So what are you optimistic then about the future of P&G?
Hilary: [00:21:56] Definitely. I do feel like it's an interesting moment. I think there's so there's so many conversations right now about like, oh, what is this going to look like in one year, in five years and ten years just feels like it'll be so different, right? It's hard to even envision. And I do think that there will be tech advances that make sense, that will reduce waste in a lot of ways. Right. I think that that will be the, the blessing, I guess, of tech is that we will be able to predict more accurately areas where there could be waste and hopefully stop some of it before it starts. But I also think that for myself or my family or for, for folks who are just like feeding themselves on a daily basis, the amount of what I would consider like real experiences does feel like it's kind of trimming down even in our arts and culture, right? Like music is there's all these kind of AI produced musical acts and things like that. And so real is kind of becoming a bit more rare. And I think that as an industry, we just should lean into that and just great. This is what we can excel at, right? Because this is fundamentally the realist. So we should, you know, we should farm for flavor. We should get people excited about what they're eating and use the tools in the ways that make sense and do help. But I think there's almost an opportunity to be a little more, I don't know if I can't quite get the word right, but yeah, yeah.
Kirti: [00:23:27] No, but you when you, I actually, I love your perspective because especially in today's technology and AI and what's happening out there, you're right. We have to educate the Ag where you, you're actually doing stuff with your hands and kind of making it happen. That's never going to be AI right. We'll never have an AI generated strawberry. Maybe if we do that, I don't know how that tastes, but the, the that too, I don't want to seems a little corporate to say capitalize on that. But people for them to understand This is going to be our keeping our humanness alive, right? That's what this industry is.
Hilary: [00:24:10] Yes, yes. That's it. This is an excellent way for us to maintain and nourish our humanity, right? Like that's.
Kirti: [00:24:18] Yeah.
Hilary: [00:24:18] That's going to be really important, I think.
Kirti: [00:24:21] I know that's, that's awesome. You're just like, yeah, that just feels me. That was such a great show. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else, Hilary, that we missed that you wanted to chat about?
Hilary: [00:24:33] I think AG is the most exciting thing to be a part of, and I hope I'm always in it. And I just want to bring more people, you know, into the fold.
Kirti: [00:24:43] So so what can we do about that? How do we do that in your opinion? How do we get people enough more and more people thinking the way you and I think.
Hilary: [00:24:52] I think we have to feed them. I think we have to feed them some really good food. Uh, you know, I think that's key because I'm thinking back of about the first time that I had really good tomato, which I grew up thinking I hated tomatoes, and I was like, well, I'll never eat them, you know? The first time I had a really good tomato and someone put a little bit of salt on it. Boom. It just opened my whole world. And I just want to like, replicate that experience. I think we just have to keep showing people like that wonder. You know, there's so few, um, moments in life after you kind of get past a certain age where you have the ability to experience wonder and food is a way in. And so I think if we can give people that experience, whether it's feeding them or just sharing with them something amazing that you learned or telling them the story of who grew their carrot, if that resonates, I think anything we can do along those lines will help people want to be more a part of this. It's a very like, it's such an open community to, you know, everyone is welcome. And I really like that about Ag.
Kirti: [00:25:59] That's true. Have you seen the movie Ratatouille?
Hilary: [00:26:02] Yes, I love Ratatouille. Yes.
Kirti: [00:26:06] So when you are eating a tomato with a salt on it. I was like imagining that whole sensation of. But that is true. It's like having people go through that experience and how it feels when you actually have like an American, I say American grown because I think that is a little bit superior. I, I was just going to say California grown, but I know you're saying, but yeah, but it's like a it there is a certain the way food is grown here. And I know we talked about kind of the imperfect and perfect. But at the same time, though, the food that's grown here is by far the most superior food I feel. So I. And just people to just taste it and taste the freshness of it and kind of understand where it comes from. I think that that experience is what needs to happen more and more, right? We have to have a demos, more of those demos to feel it. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah.
Hilary: [00:27:13] I'm just gonna go door to door.
Kirti: [00:27:14] What about you? So are you continue spreading the story? Is that what excites you?
Hilary: [00:27:23] Yeah, I think so. I think I, I always want to be in a place where I can share stories back and forth. I kind of like doing this, this kind of, I don't want to say mediator, but I sort of like being able to communicate in both directions because it's just so important that we're talking to one another and like discussing openly the challenges and joys of, of what our day to day is like. So I hope I'm always involved in in Ag in this capacity, you know, being able to kind of go back and forth between the end of the supply chain and the beginning of the supply chain. I find that very rewarding and satisfying.
Kirti: [00:28:06] Yeah, yeah. And we being in the healthcare side of things, you see an impact on actually the claims utilization and stuff like that by eating right, food, right. So you actually see from data standpoint, you see an impact of that. And I also say within agriculture, like you said, the people taking care of people, there's a perception out there on how employees get treated. But honestly, I've never seen that from we serve the ag industry and we actually see the people, employers who do right by the employees and take care of the employees actually has an impact on their data and how the cost looks from a medical standpoint, which is so amazing. That's a small experiment that you see that when you put like human beings and take care of each other right the way from, uh, like we talked about our produce and stuff that actually really has real impact on your health. And it's shown with data. We can show it with data. So it's pretty cool. We should collaborate and do events where you are kind of having people experience like your, the thing that you talked about, just tasting something like a simple thing, like a tomato and realizing what's happening and then talk how this from our standpoint, from a health plan standpoint, show it with numbers. So for the skeptics, you show it with numbers saying, hey, eating that tomato is just sensory kind of a thing, but also it impacts your general health. And so it's taking care of yourself, like completely, right? You're taking care of yourself. So that would be awesome to do that, collaborate and do something like that. Yes.
Hilary: [00:29:48] Yeah, let's definitely talk more about that. I think that would be fantastic.
Kirti: [00:29:51] Yeah, yeah. Because I think you you and I seem to be very. So now I understand Maribel said you have to meet with her. So I guess so. This is such an awesome way to start off my day. I'm so energized. I know it's later in the afternoon for you, but, uh, really, this has been so exciting and I know we can continue talking for hours. I feel like I've known you, just like in the 20 minutes that we talked and such a beautiful thing you you're doing with your role and what you were with the produce and connecting and all that. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.
Hilary: [00:30:28] Thank you so much. It's been great talking to you.
Kirti: [00:30:30] Yeah. And we'll stay in touch. Thanks.
Hilary: [00:30:33] Sounds good.