Chain grocery stores traditionally prefer to buy blemish-free farm produce. This has led to food waste of misshapen, yet perfectly edible and still delicious fruits and vegetables. That’s why Divy Ojha launched Odd Bunch in 2017, with a mission to rescue imperfect produce from farms and deliver it to households at a major discount. Today, the Canadian subscription service serves more than 100,000 households—from an initial 87—across four provinces.
Sometimes the most obvious solutions create the most sustainable business models. Divy’s journey from those first 87 subscribers to his now six-figure roster was forged through what he calls “naive optimism,” relentless customer focus, and an unwavering commitment to operational efficiency.
How to grow to 100,000 loyal customers
After almost a decade of experience in the food industry, Divy broke down his customer growth and retention strategy.
1. Start with real problem validation
Divy was a 19-year-old student at Western University who read about food waste during his first semester. The statistics were staggering: Massive amounts of produce never made it off farms while food prices continued rising.
Reading about a problem and understanding how it exists in the real world are two different things though.
“The first step was to verify that a pain point existed on the supply side,” Divy recalls. Rather than building a solution based on assumptions, he found a local farming directory and started making calls. When farmers didn’t answer the phone, he drove to their farms.
“I was smart enough to not just go in and pitch them on my brilliant idea that I had come up with six days prior,” Divy says.
Instead, he used the time to understand their business. There were about 47 farms within driving distance, and Divy made multiple visits to get to know the farmers. As with any successful relationship, he built up trust over a period of time. He let farmers know he was interested in what types of seasonal challenges they faced and what they did with their less-than-perfect produce the big chain grocers didn’t want, and he even got to know the history of specific farms and orchards—learning that one orchard had been in business since 1881.
This patience paid off. By the third or fourth visit, farmers opened up about the reality of food waste on their operations. They confirmed surplus produce often became animal feed or was sadly dumped, despite local efforts to share within their communities. Divy knew that problem validation requires going beyond surface-level research. And now he knew that what he identified as a problem was an ongoing real-world issue for farmers. The farmers might not have been as receptive to Odd Bunch if Divy hadn’t spent the time getting to know them and the challenges they faced.
2. Execute fast, then learn
Once he validated the supply-side problem, Divy moved with remarkable speed. It took him only 47 days from the initial idea to first box delivery. He attributes the lightning flash timeline to “naive optimism.” Something that prevented him from overthinking the operation.
“At 19 I looked at the food system and said, Yep, I could fix that,” he recalls, laughing. “At 26, 27, you kind of realize there’s a lot of depth here. But sometimes when you start overcomplicating, overthinking, you never actually take the most important step, which is the first step.”
Odd Bunch’s rapid execution included getting a friend to build a basic Shopify website in exchange for a ride to Richmond Hill, Ontario. The site was simple but functional—a few products, checkout capability, and subscription functionality from day one. Divy understood perfect was the enemy of done when it came to testing market demand.
Quickly spinning up an ecommerce site worked because it focused on the minimum viable product needed to test the market: Would people buy imperfect produce delivered to their door at a discount? By going to market and launching, Divy could observe actual customer behavior rather than a theoretical scenario. He knew validation needs to happen first and that perfection could come later.
3. Find early adopters where they are
After launching the website, Odd Bunch got zero traffic. Divy’s solution came from an unexpected source—Facebook mom groups.
“It was a mom group and it was a vegan group. There were two that did really well,” Divy explains. “The majority of the first 87 people that signed up in that 10-day activation period, 80% came from those groups."
Divy didn’t do any sophisticated targeting or demographic analysis. He had an idea of the type of communities where his value proposition would naturally resonate. Moms managing household budgets appreciated the cost savings. Environmentally conscious consumers connected with the food waste mission. Both groups valued supporting a student entrepreneur.
This community-first strategy has driven growth for years. Even as Odd Bunch scaled, word of mouth and referrals remained strong growth drivers.
4. Embrace operational constraints as competitive advantages
The biggest constraint came early when the original Food Fund model—allowing customers to customize their boxes completely—became operationally unsustainable. “We got to 200, we got to 250, we got to 300 SKUs. And it was just madness. The operational side of it was just there was no consistency,” Divy says.
With only four weeks of cash remaining, he pivoted to the current Odd Bunch model, where customers choose between three simple parameters: conventional or organic, mixed/fruit/veggie, and small/medium/large sizes. Rather than seeing this as a limitation, Odd Bunch positioned it as transparency—customers knew exactly what would arrive each week.
Divy was able to turn what was an operational limitation into a competitive moat. By simplifying the choices provided to customers, Odd Bunch still allowed for variety while enabling sustainable scaling.
“That was our happy middle between removing that customization piece where you couldn’t choose exactly what was in the box, but you knew exactly what was in the box,”
Divy notes. Customers can still substitute items or skip weeks, preventing waste while dramatically simplifying operations.
While publicly traded meal kit companies achieve 12% to 15% annual retention rates, Odd Bunch maintains 53% net retention at 12 months—three to four times the industry standard. Odd Bunch excels at retention by focusing on customer satisfaction and product quality over new customer acquisition.
5. Build retention before scaling acquisition
The majority of subscription businesses focus heavily on customer acquisition, while Odd Bunch obsesses over retention metrics, and has from day one.
“Virality is rented, retention is owned,” Divy says. The team tracks retention across multiple dimensions—quarterly, annually, by geography, and by product variant. They discovered customers who successfully refer someone within their first four weeks show retention rates “an order of magnitude higher” than those who don’t.
Instead of immediately pushing for additional purchases from customers, they prioritize creating shareable moments that turn customers into referral engines. Research has shown a smaller base of loyal customers often outperforms a larger base of marginally satisfied ones.
6. Scale when unit economics support it
After six years of organic growth (no pun intended), Odd Bunch finally began paid advertising, in November 2023. “We definitely waited for very strong feedback to come through,” Divy explains.
By waiting until it was profitable before it scaled—Odd Bunch was able to maintain and consistently grow its subscription business. “We haven’t had a single loss-making quarter in the history of the company,” Divy says—a remarkable achievement in the typically capital-intensive world of food delivery.
Today, Odd Bunch serves half of Canada’s postal codes, with plans to reach 80% by the end of 2025. The company is also expanding into value-added products like cold-pressed juices and exploring shelf-stable grocery items. With 280 employees and profitable operations, Odd Bunch has built the foundation for continued scaling.
Building for long-term value rather than short-term metrics has enabled Odd Bunch to grow during economic uncertainty while competitors struggled. As food costs rise and consumers become more price-conscious, Odd Bunch’s value proposition is only strengthened.
In an era of growth-at-all-costs mentalities and venture-funded customer acquisition, Divy’s approach is refreshingly old-school yet surprisingly modern. Focusing on fundamentals—product quality, customer satisfaction, operational efficiency—Odd Bunch thrives regardless of market conditions.
Tune in to Divy’s Shopify Masters episode on YouTube to learn how you can create a sustainable business model that creates values while generating consistent profits.
