Gopuff now sells meat, seafood, and more sourced from Misfits Market

Gopuff, the Philly-founded on-demand delivery app has partnered with Misfits Market, a produce-delivery company also born in Philadelphia, to offer customers a selection of fresh groceries delivered straight to their door. The initiative is available in most major Gopuff markets starting Wednesday and will soon be in all of the company’s markets.

“Gopuff is uniquely equipped to deliver high-quality fresh produce and groceries at very affordable prices,” Yakir Gola, Gopuff cofounder and co-CEO, said in a statement.

Previously, Gopuff had some fresh produce for sale in select markets but had not offered bread, meat, seafood, or robust selections of dairy, fruit, and vegetables, according to a spokesperson for the company. With this partnership, the company is doubling the amount of fresh produce it offers. Customers can find the new offerings under the “Fresh Grocery” category on Gopuff’s app.

Over 300 items will be available, including fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy, meat, seafood, poultry, and bread. In the future, Misfits Market founder and CEO Abhi Ramesh said, he expects that number to grow.

Gopuff piloted the initiative in Philadelphia and Chicago and found customers had a particular interest in bananas, avocados, oranges, strawberries, milk, deli products, and cheeses, the spokesperson said.

“We knew that fresh produce and meats and seafood were a natural extension of our core business,” said Max Crowley, the company’s vice president of merchandising. “It was something that our customers were looking for and searching for.”

To handle products that are not shelf-stable, the company developed technology to track expiration dates and determine where to best place an item once it is received at a warehouse, Crowley said.

The new initiative comes as Gopuff has been carving out space as a food operator in recent years. Last year, the company trained some of its own employees to make Starbucks drinks to deliver them to customers at all hours of the day. In 2021, the company also launched Gopuff Kitchen to offer customers prepared foods, including pizzas, salads, and sandwiches.

Misfits Market launched in North Philadelphia in 2018 with a focus on rescuing produce that might otherwise go to waste and delivering it to customer’s homes. Since then, the company has expanded to sell other groceries, including pantry items, meat, and seafood. This year, the company will offer over 1,200 items in its store and expects that number to grow in the future, Ramesh said.

In February, Misfits Market announced the launch of a new service that allows brands to use the company’s existing logistics and infrastructure to store, pick, pack, fulfill, and deliver their perishable products. The partnership with Gopuff builds upon that announcement, Ramesh said, and in the future, Misfits could provide fresh products to other platforms or retailers. This new kind of work provides Misfits Market with a “powerful new revenue stream,” he said.

“A lot of other platforms are realizing [that] trying to build all of that perishable infrastructure in-house is super hard so you’re better off relying on someone [who] specializes in it like us,” Ramesh said.

Misfits Market, which Ramesh says is “building the Amazon of perishables,” has already received some interest from other businesses about future partnerships.

“My hunch is this will be one of the fastest growing business lines that we have internally at Misfits. Even in the early days of the partnership, we’ve seen how impactful it’s been for Gopuff,” Ramesh said. “We see this as a huge, huge growth factor for us over the coming year.”