The startup that tried to fix food waste—and got hit by a disinformation campaign

A few years ago, if you walked down the produce aisle in any major supermarket in the U.S., you might have seen a sticker on avocados or lemons that said “Apeel.” The label wasn’t from a grower, but from a company designed to fight food waste; by adding a food-safe, plant-based coating to the fruit, it’s possible to make it last days longer, so it’s less likely to end up in the trash. Apeel Sciences was quickly growing, and had already become one of the first food waste companies to reach unicorn status. (It made Fast Company‘s Most Innovative Companies list in 2019.) Grocers were touting the fact that they were using the product to reduce waste. The startup raised more than $800 million by 2022. But then the company found itself at the center of an online disinformation campaign amplified by wellness influencers, leaving it struggling to survive. Social media posts claimed, falsely, that it wasn’t safe to eat fruit with Apeel—and linked to the ingredients of an unrelated floor cleaner that also happened to be named Apeel. Consumers started pressuring both grocery stores and growers to stop using the product. Retailers caved. The company’s business crashed. The story shows how easily a promising product can be derailed, and what it takes for a company to begin to recover. [Image: Apeel] The rise of a food waste unicorn The research behind Apeel began in 2011, the brainchild of a doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was searching for ways to fight global hunger. “The vision was, if we’re already growing enough food to feed everyone, the problem isn’t that we need to grow more food,” says James Rogers, the founder. “The problem is that we need to get the food to the people who need it.” Working in his garage, Rogers started to develop the product, using ingredients found in seeds, pulp, and peels of other food, such as grape skins. “The company mimics the coating that’s on the surface of all fruits and vegetables, and by strengthe