Established in 2024 in Jaipur by mother-daughter duo Vinita and Aditi Jhala, The Misfits upcycles fruits and vegetables to make dips, spreads, and snacks. They source produce from farmers around Jaipur—produce that is typically rejected based on the market’s standards of appearance. Their current range of products includes pesto made with moringa, relish made with red onions with Ashwagandha, chocolate spread made with pumpkin puree and chickpeas, and chocolate bites.
The idea behind The Misfits stems from a need to address food waste and post-harvest losses for farmers. In India, around 31,000 crores rupees worth of fruits and vegetables are thrown away annually because they are deemed imperfect due to cosmetic blemishes or deformed shapes. Although it has only been a little over a year since its establishment, The Misfits has upcycled around 277 kilograms of vegetables so far.
Currently, Aditi handpicks each vegetable from six of their partner farmers who grow them without any chemical inputs. Typically, these vegetables are discarded and farmers do not earn any money from it. The Misfits, however, pays them a fair price for their produce. For instance, they pay farmers anywhere between 25 to 40 rupees per kilogram for carrot tops.
They source other ingredients like cacao nibs, nuts such as almonds and cashews, as well as nutritional yeast from trusted partners across India. They also use ingredients like Brahmi and Ashwagandha powder to improve nutrition and balance flavour.
The Locavore Bite
TL Bite offers a glimpse into how a partner producer runs their operations, and reflects their core principles and values. The idea is to provide insights into their practices and highlight their positive efforts descriptively. We have identified seven key areas of assessment – origin and source of ingredients, composition and integrity of the products, workforce policies, production practices, community-related initiatives, approach towards preserving or celebrating traditional knowledge and the materials used in packaging. While this assessment may not be entirely comprehensive, we hope it helps you make an informed decision about why you might want to support them, and the ways in which to do so.
The information below offers you a snapshot of where The Misfits stands on these parameters. We have put this together based on several rounds of conversations with Aditi. Click on a piece of the pie below to find out more.
Why We Love The Misfits
- Addressing food waste and water scarcity: They use oft-ignored or discarded vegetables such as leafy and yellow carrot tops, blemished or deformed onions, and softened coriander leaves. This helps reduce food waste and saves water too. For every kilogram of vegetables upcycled, they save around 189 litres of water, determined using this food waste calculator.
- Using all parts of a vegetable: Each vegetable at The Misfits is completely utilised. Growing up, Vinita would use every part of a fruit or vegetable—be it the peel, the stem, or the tops—in her cooking. This reflects in their products too.
Manual processing: Each vegetable is picked by hand from the farms, and undergoes two steps of quality checking: one at the source, and the other before it is processed in the kitchen to make the products. For instance, many of the onions they source have joined bulbs, which cannot be processed in a machine. The bulbs are then separated and peeled by hand.
How does upcycling fruits and vegetables help address the issue of food waste in India? Could you explain with an example?
India wastes nearly 40 percent of the fruits and vegetables it produces every year. Most of this waste doesn’t happen because the food is bad but because it’s imperfect. A banana that’s too small, a mango with a blemish, or a pumpkin that’s oddly shaped often never makes it to the market shelves. These perfectly edible fruits and vegetables end up in landfills, where they release methane, contributing directly to the climate crisis.
That’s where upcycling comes in. At The Misfits, we rescue this so-called “rejected” produce and transform it into delicious, wholesome products—from chutneys to snacks to spreads. For example,a pumpkin rejected by retailers for a few surface blemishes can still be flavourful and nutritious. Instead of letting it rot in a landfill, we upcycle it into our Cocospread, made with pumpkin puree, chickpeas, cashew and almond butters, unsweetened cocoa powder, Brahmi and Ashwagandha, organic khand (unrefined sugar made from sugarcane juice), and cold-pressed sunflower oil. This helps reduce waste, thereby generating fewer emissions.
—Aditi Jhala, co-founder of The Misfits
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If you would like to learn more about The Misfits, or try their products, check out their website. If you’re interested in supporting them in other ways, please contact us at connect@thelocavore.in.
This is a paid partnership with The Misfits. At The Locavore, we strive to keep the practices of a producer transparent and honest across all forms of partnerships.
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