There's at least one company trying to do this - Misfit Markets sells boxes of ugly produce delivered to your door, and they claim to be cheaper than supermarket prices as an ugliness discount. (Disclaimer: I've never used them, a relative works for them)
My wife bought into one of these services, the $25 box we received contained about 10 - 15 dollars worth of produce from my local store but at a lower quality. It was also random and often contained undesirable items in large quantities (who needs 12 lemons for the week?, What am I supposed to do with 3 fingerling potatoes?). I used to work in food service and it was pretty obvious to me that they were sourcing items from Sysco or US Foods by the way the items were tagged and packaged. I think the shipping costs eat away any value you could expect from something like this.
> The 25 vs 15 dollars issue means their business sucks unless they have a value add on top?
As I am buying "less desirable produce" (from what I can tell it all came from normal cases that a restaurant would order, I think this fools some people as they aren't used to seeing produce that still has dirt on it and is less presentable like that) I would expect more of it for my money, not less. I understand they have to pay for shipping but it's not as if I don't have to go to the grocery store anyway, maybe I just don't see the value proposition, for us it just wasn't there.
>If you were getting 15 lemons per week, maybe contract the vendor and try to address the issue?
Even if the product was more evenly distributed it wasn't enough for it to provide value for me. That point was just the final nail in the coffin.
Price them down, ppl would consider the deal. It's a market, isn't it?
Or, well, it's a supermarket being part of super-chains... Potatoes by pound priced like fruits.