Can Quality Communication and Price Incentives Make Visually Imperfect Food More Appealing?

How many yellowish limes do you usually see in your local supermarket? A change in skin colour does not mean that a lime is of lower quality or unsuitable for consumption. Yet, around 11% of limes are returned by retail costumers due to aesthetic expectations, as a case study shows.

According to that study, at producer level, roughly 30% of limes are discarded each year mainly due to skin color changes and aesthetic imperfections*.

So, how can better communication and price incentives help bring more of these limes to the market and encourage consumers to choose them?

Testing things on the ground

A 12-day quasi-experimental retail pilot of the Breadcrumb project tested this in two supermarkets by offering visually imperfect limes, alongside transparent information about their quality and reduced prices. The pilot, conducted jointly by the CSCP, the German organic wholesaler lehmann natur, the German retailer REWE, and the Belgian research institute VLTN, showed positive results, with consumers responding well to visually imperfect produce.

Pilot design and implementation

The retail pilot compared four different conditions at store and day level: no intervention, communication only, a price discount only, and a combination of communication and discount. This allowed the researchers to see how each measure affected sales as well as whether combining communication and discount had a stronger effect.

For each store and day, the team recorded which condition was applied, along with sales, prices and other factors that could influence purchasing behaviour, such as customer traffic and weather. This made it possible to compare consumer responses under real shopping conditions while taking normal day-to-day variations into account.

What we found out

The pilot tested two main measures: clear information about the quality of the discoloured limes and targeted price reductions.

The results showed that yellowish limes sold better when both measures, communication and discount, were used together. This suggests that combining clear information about product quality with a financial incentive can encourage consumers to choose visually imperfect produce.

Limitations and learnings

The retail pilot was based on a small dataset of 24 store-day observations collected over a short period. As a result, the findings may have been influenced by temporary changes in customer traffic or by initial consumer curiosity. That is why the results do not establish the effectiveness of the combined intervention or its impact on upstream food loss; however they justify a more rigorous field evaluation. Future research should therefore move beyond these small, short-term data windows and examine the effects over longer periods and with more observations.

A broader scope would help better account for differences in store customer profiles and monitor product freshness over time.

How Breadcrumb insights can inspire uptake and scaling

The pilot provides feasibility evidence and effect-size estimates for a larger trial toward scaling and normalising the sale of visually imperfect products at retail level.

By recognising their market potential, producers and retailers can strengthen food value chains, while consumers can benefit from greater awareness that visually imperfect products are of the same quality as their conventional counterparts.

The pilot also highlights the potential of behavioural approaches in retail environments to increase the uptake of visually imperfect products and demonstrates how such interventions can be expanded beyond the pilot setting.

Join us in this effort!

At the CSCP, we are keen on exploring how behavioural approaches and (more) flexible aesthetic standards can support the uptake of visually imperfect products across different product categories and retail settings.

That’s why we want to connect retailers, producers, researchers and other food-system partners to exchange, explore, and discuss opportunities for future collaboration.

Are you one of them? Get in touch with Regina Fernandez zu uns zu kommen!

*BREADCRUMB Case Study 2025