Brand wonky veg ‘authentic’ and the foodies will come flocking

Generally, one can count on the marketing profession to come up with ingenious ruses to sell things for more money than they’re strictly worth. But no system is perfect. Witness, then, the supermarket chain Morrisons’ curious decision to charge customers vastly less for “wonky” fruit and vegetables.

The supermarket is so apologetic about the shape of the veg, and so keen on wading into the world of do-goodery by cutting down on food waste (apparently in response to customer concern), that it’s going to be slashing the price of its funny-looking produce by nearly half.

By its own admission, its skew-whiff chillies, for instance, have the same heat and flavour as their shapelier brethren – it’s just that they have “defects” such as “extreme curvature”, patchy colouring, missing stalks or a smaller size.

And its wonky frozen berries taste the same too, but 1kg bags of them will cost much less than their even-shaped frozen siblings.

Morrisons is not the first supermarket aiming to make a virtue of stocking less-than-perfect fruit and veg. Asda now offers boxes of misshapen produce, branding it “beautiful on the inside”, again at a discounted price.

The chains have cleverly capitalised on consumer research – sustainability is selling like hot cakes right now – and any scheme that gets us eating more greens is to be applauded. But I can’t help but feel that the whole campaign is missing a trick.

For if ever we lived in an gastronomic age where being closer to nature was a virtue, it’s now. We’ve seen the stratospheric rise of organic, bio, free-from, vegan, raw, and paleo diets, the resurgence of the allotment and the rise of the farmers’ market as the hipsters’ weekend place of worship. We want our eggs dusted with feathers, our radishes caked in mud, our milk unpasteurised. Even at the supermarket, we’re hopelessly persuadable to anything that sounds natural, paying a premium for heritage carrots, artisan bread and “selected for taste” tomatoes.

So instead of apologising for convex chillies, spotted peppers and squashedlooking raspberries by slashing their price, Morrisons could be teaching consumers to value misshapen produce even more than their boring symmetrical peers. Next to its primped and pert relations, the supermarket could be forcing us to see that the bulbous capuscum or eccentrically blotched kiwi looks characterful and natural; that in those crooked or absent stalks an agricultural utopia resides in which no human chemical has ever interfered (or so it seems).

Once convinced that misshapen is really a by-word for more natural and authentic, we’d be willing to pay 50 per cent more, not less, for the produce. Indeed, many are the pounds I’ve spent on unpackaged greenery clotted in its native soil; many the clutch of rhubarb or chard shot through with unorthodox colours and uneven textures, because the vendor came from a quaint farm somewhere very rustic and authentic.

Trying to get consumers to accept veg even though they’re wonky is a waste of an opportunity when we could, with a bit of clever marketing, have been easily seduced into falling in love with that very wonkiness – and paying over the odds for it too.