Apeel’s Edible Produce Coating Could Slay Food Waste And Save Supermarkets Billions

Apeel produce is, for the first time, becoming available in stores. For now, that’s only Apeel avocados. (Which makes sense. The fickleness of a ripe avocado has inspired internet memes, but Americans still bought north of $2 billion of them last year.) Harps, a grocery chain in the Midwest, started selling Apeel avocados in May, and Costco signed on in June. In the three months since, Apeel says Harps has discarded dramatically fewer avocados—as much as 60% fewer. That improvement translated to a 10% sales lift in avocados, and a 65-percentage-point increase in its margin on the fruit.