After being discharged from the Army due to an injury, Ben Moore returned to his family’s farm in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a region that produces nearly 80 percent of the fruit and nuts consumed in the United States. However, when his father, a fourth-generation farmer, explained there was no money to be made from growing crops, Moore decided to buy a transport truck instead.

Summers were busy. If he wasn’t hauling fruit to packing houses, he was transporting “ugly” fruit—culls, as they are called—from packing houses to dairies to be used as animal feed. More often than not, he hauled the culled fruit to dump in open fields to rot. Moore kept track of his dump runs and realized that in one year, he had hauled 120 truckloads, totaling eight million pounds of wasted fruit.

“Sometimes, I’d grab a peach or nectarine from a load and eat it. I’d wonder, ‘Why am I dumping this? This is good fruit,’” Moore recalled. Unwilling to accept the waste, he began brainstorming ideas for what to do with the fruit farmers couldn’t sell due to irregular shapes or blemished skin. His thoughts kept circling back to his Swedish grandmother.

“She was so creative when it came to preserving fruit, canning, drying, and more. I used to eat her dried fruit as a treat. She really inspired me to follow her lead,” he said. “I also wanted to do something meaningful with my career and keep farming in the family.”

Moore shared his idea with local fruit packers but was met with skepticism. “I was told people didn’t care about wasted fruit, that it was cheaper to throw it away than to try and do something with it.”

One exception was Casey Jones, a former high school classmate of Moore’s and the owner of Sun Valley Packing, which manages 6,000 acres of orchards growing peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, and other crops. “During the packing season, we run 1.5 million pounds of fruit a day through our facility, and we discard up to 300,000 pounds a day due to quality issues,” Jones said. “If we could sell that fruit instead of having to pay $250 a load to dump it, as Ben suggested, it would be a game-changer in terms of revenue for our farm and others.”

Jones had another reason to be interested. His family’s company, Sun Valley Packing, aims to become zero-waste by 2025, a goal driven by pressure from major retailers like Costco and Walmart to be more sustainable. Upcycling ugly fruit into a healthy, high-value snack seemed like the perfect solution.

“Ben’s vision was bigger than anyone else’s. He was a breath of fresh air in Farmersville,” Jones said. “Making it happen wasn’t going to be easy, though, so we agreed to supply the fruit and offer him advice.”

While the company’s branding, The Ugly Company, was catchy and memorable, launching a dried fruit business was neither easy nor cheap. “I sold my truck, my house, and my business to raise enough money to start this venture. I was living pretty modestly,” Moore said.

Realizing his lack of knowledge in accounting, finance, and marketing, Moore applied to the MBA program at the Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business. “I thought Notre Dame was in Boston, so I was surprised to learn it was in Indiana,” he laughed. “I showed up in boots and jeans while my classmates wore suits. There weren’t many farmer-truckers in the program.” It was during his time at Notre Dame that Moore formally launched The Ugly Company.

Moore produced his first batch of dried fruit in his aunt’s kitchen with her help and then began pitching his product to coffee shops, yoga studios, and small health food stores in the Los Angeles area. Despite receiving more rejections than acceptances, Moore remained persistent. His first major sale came from Two Guns Espresso, a California coffee chain.

Perfecting the production process proved challenging. Outsourcing manufacturing was expensive and often led to inconsistent quality. That’s when Jones suggested Moore vertically integrate his operations, controlling everything from sourcing the fruit to processing, marketing, and distribution.

“We had just the right location for him,” Jones said. “There was an old raisin processing plant in Farmersville that still had the dryers and tunnels Ben needed. When the plant shut down, people lost jobs, so there was a workforce ready and waiting. What the plant didn’t have was grading, slicing, and automation equipment. Ben would need to buy state-of-the-art equipment. That’s when my family decided to invest in the company.”

Things moved quickly after that. When Moore advertised for 12 jobs, 200 people applied. Among the hires were three full-time employees with relevant experience from the old raisin plant. The local workforce’s pride in their work has translated into greater consistency and quality for The Ugly Company’s products. When 54 Whole Foods stores signed on as customers, things took off. Soon after, major retailers like REI, Sprouts, Hy-Vee, and Ralphs followed.

In 2023, Moore and The Ugly Company went out on a limb and participated in Walmart’s Open Call event, which invites roughly 1,000 small to medium-sized American companies to pitch their products to the retail giant. Each year, roughly 50 to 100 companies make the cut. Moore pitched The Ugly Company and its mission to reduce food waste by upcycling blemished fruit into sugar and additive-free dried fruit products. Walmart loved the idea and awarded Moore a contract to supply his products to Sam’s Club stores. Moore calls the Sam’s Club deal “transformational.”

“In our first six years of business, we processed 16 million pounds of fruit, avoiding a massive amount of food waste. Because of our Sam’s Club contract, we processed 7.7 million pounds in the first nine months of 2024. Our sales soared, the amount of wasted fruit plunged, and we paid our farmer-suppliers $385,000 for the fruit they used to pay to dump,” Moore said.

The Ugly Company recently returned to Walmart for its 2024 Open Call event and walked away with an even bigger contract. As of May 2025, The Ugly Company’s upcycled dried fruit snacks will be carried in Walmart stores across America. The retailer likes The Ugly Company’s mission to reduce food waste and support American farmers so much that they have invited Moore to tour stores and do speaking engagements with Walmart leadership to introduce the product and its impact.”

“Walmart is the largest retailer in the world but one of the easiest businesses we have worked with,” Moore said. “They love what we are doing as a company. This is really exciting for us and the farmers in California that believed in us.”

Despite his success, Moore remains grounded. His long-term vision is to end food waste not only in California but globally. He has already traveled to Mexico and South Africa in search of potential partners and is working on two new products, naturally sweetened dried mangoes and bananas. In the meantime, his impact on the local community is undeniable.

Farmersville Mayor Tina Hernandez is grateful for the positive change The Ugly Company has brought to the town. “Before Ben bought the plant, it was an eyesore. Now, it’s back in business, and the business is thriving. He’s hiring locals, buying fruit from farmers, and giving us something to be proud of.”

She added, “Ben has put Farmersville back on the map, and I love seeing our town’s name on every Ugly Company package!”

Originally published by Melanie Lux at ideacenter.nd.edu on March 31, 2025.