Grocery delivery giant Misfits Market intends to acquire competitor Imperfect Foods

Thanks to an impending acquisition, two “ugly” food brands — Philly-founded Misfits Market and online grocer Imperfect Foods — will soon be united.

Misfits Market announced its planned acquisition Wednesday, which it said will allow the brands to “deliver a better, more sustainable grocery experience” and reach $1 billion in sales and profitability by 2024.

The local company — Technical.ly’s 2021 RealLIST Startups list topper — was founded in North Philadelphia in 2018, before moving to South Jersey near the start of the pandemic to increase square footage of its facilities and meet demand. It has raised huge rounds of VC in the last year, first a $200 million Series C in early 2021 then a $225 million round boosting the company’s value to a reported $2 billion in September. That latest round was targeted at adding employees to keep up with increased demand, Misfits Market said at the time. It currently employs around 1,400 people and operates in 48 states.

Imperfect Foods, founded in 2015, has brought in a total of $229 million to date, and employs around 1,200 people.

Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods both aim to tackle food waste in the US, where it’s estimated 30 to 40% of the food supply chain is wasted.

“Both companies believe that the food system is fundamentally broken due to decades of underinvestment by the incumbents,” Misfits Market CEO Abhi Ramesh said in an announcement video.

Though the brands will continue to operate separately in the short term, Ramesh will serve as the combined companies’ CEO with executives from Imperfect Foods joining the Misfits Market leadership team. The purchase of Imperfect Foods will help the Philly-area company continue building out its supply chain, tackle inefficiency, lower prices, and continue to “fundamentally improve how consumers shop for groceries online,” it said.

“We have a tremendous opportunity to advance the shared mission of both brands, which is nothing less than a fundamental reimagining of both the grocery category and the broken US food system,” Ramesh said in a statement. “The strengths of the Imperfect Foods organization, from its in-house delivery fleet and robust private label program to its sustainability commitments and innovation, add immediate scale and depth to what we’re building at Misfits Market.”

Ramesh told TechCrunch he intends to take the company public once it’s profitable.

“Scale matters in grocery, and this combination makes us a truly meaningful disruptor in the space,” Imperfect Foods CEO Dan Park said in a statement.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.