Columbia, You're on Shark Tank!

COLUMBIA, MD — Hungry Harvest, a Columbia-based business selling ugly produce, is on ABC’s reality TV show Shark Tank, where entrepreneurs compete for funding from investors.

Hungry Harvest appeared on Shark Tank at 9 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 8.

Headquartered on Bendix Road in Columbia, Hungry Harvest buys abnormal produce from farmers for pennies on the dollar.

“There’s 6 billion pounds of produce that goes to waste every year—an eggplant is too small or a banana is not the right shade of yellow,” Hungry Harvest CEO Evan Lutz told Patch.

”A grocery store opens a truck full of apples and one of the pallets is damaged on the outside—they can reject the entire truckload,” Lutz said. “So we work with local farms and wholesalers to recover surplus produce, then package it in nice variety boxes.”

Related: Columbia Company Appearing on ‘Shark Tank’

Customers receive deliveries of fruits and vegetables from 15 to 23 pounds weekly for $15 to $55.

For each bag sold, the company gives away a bag to a family in need.

Lutz is one of three University of Maryland graduates who started the business a year and a half ago.

So far, Lutz said funding has come from a few sources: Hungry Harvest received $25,000 from the Conscious Venture Lab, a startup accelerator in Columbia; the three cofounders put in $18,000; and the business was awarded $13,000 in additional grants and donations.

On Shark Tank, “we were swimming for $50,000 for 5 percent equity,” Lutz said, but he couldn’t reveal the outcome.

“It’s really really dramatic and exciting,” he said of being on TV. He and his cofounders are hosting a watch party at their headquarters in the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship in Columbia Friday night to celebrate.

Watch Hungry Harvest on Shark Tank on ABC at 9 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 8.