The Big Ugly

"Agriculture is in my blood," Ben Moore (MBA ‘20) said. After work, he drives his tractor around his family's farm fields in central California to unwind. When his six-month-old son takes his first steps, it will be barefoot in that same soil. "All I've ever wanted to do is get back to farming," Moore said from his processing plant at The Ugly Company in Farmersville, California. His business upcycles millions of pounds of bruised or funny-looking fruit discarded by farmers and turns it into clean eating, zero-added-sugar dried snacks. It’s also the largest private employer in town. Becoming an entrepreneur wasn't ever something Moore wanted. He had two life goals, both revolving around service: to have a decades-long career in the U.S. Army and to return to the family farm in Kingsburg, California, to work the land later in life. Both those doors slammed hard in his face early on. Injured at age 23 during his military service, Moore returned to California only to discover that opportunities had dried up. His dad was barely hanging on to the farm. 

"There's no career left here for you," Moore was told. "You're going to have to find something else to do." He became a truck driver, making a good living transporting imperfect crops from farms to the dump. Moore spent a year thinking about how the food could be salvaged from the trash and the resources they could offer everyday Americans struggling to afford healthy food for their families. That's when the idea for The Ugly Company took root, and Moore came to the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business to build out the business, which he launched in 2018. So far, the company has rescued more than 13 million pounds of fruit that would otherwise have been discarded as unsellable by local farmers. In doing so, The Ugly Company has saved 445 million gallons of water — a precious resource in a state that is legendary for its prolonged droughts. Nothing came easy, but Moore is finally harvesting results. In 2023, Sam's Club placed a $1.5 million order for its products. More recently, Walmart also became a major stockist of Moore’s snacks. These days, The Ugly Company products can be found in 3,500 retail locations around the country, including CVS, REI and Sprouts. The Ugly Company was at its most precarious state when the big box stores came into the picture. "If Sam's Club and Walmart hadn't come knocking, there's a good chance we would have been out of business in six months," Moore said. Now, that couldn't be further from the truth. "Nobody goes to the grocery store to buy a dried peach," said Moore, who likes to be referred to as "The Big Ugly" rather than a founder. "You have to market and hope that during the customer journey throughout the store, they're going to encounter your product and give it a shot." In a tight economy, snacks like dried fruit might feel too pricey to pick up when folks are just trying to make ends meet and feed their families paycheck to paycheck. From the time he first imagined The Ugly Company, Moore’s North Star has been creating a healthy, sustainable product that any American can afford. Up until now, his flagship 3-ounce pouch of peaches has been sold at natural food grocers or grocery stores for $5.49 per bag. It's pricier than other dried fruits because The Ugly Company refuses to add sugars and preservatives — cheap filler ingredients that drive up a product's weight but aren't healthy for consumers' bodies. "As Americans, we’re literally starting our kids out on terrible foods," Moore said. He's intensely proud of the new line of whole plums and peaches now available on Walmart's shelves nationwide in affordable $5 snack sizes or a much larger 10-ounce family size value priced at $7.47. Right before his new stockists came into the picture, Moore was hit with a chicken-and-egg kind of problem — the type of scenario that pops up often in business school case studies. Moore said that until a few years ago, if a consumer bought five different pouches of peaches, each one would taste different. That's because the company takes multiple varieties of each fruit and dries them. They didn't yet have custom equipment that would allow them to scale with consistency. Looking to address the quality issue, he took a significant risk and purchased a processing plant in escrow, securing $9 million in investments and a $5 million bank loan. But he knew the way forward. "I'm a farmer. Growing, producing, trucking, hauling — that's my core competency. So when it came to seeing what it would take to scale agricultural production, for me, that was an easy question to answer," Moore said. Soon, his plant was ready to produce, with a group of new employees, all fired up and waiting for orders. 

"Okay, I've got the scalable problem solved," he concluded. "Now, I need customers because I don't have contracts." That's when Moore went into overdrive marketing. He knew that what The Ugly Company needed most was its first big customer, and he spent 14-hour days putting himself out there. He applied to Walmart's Open Call program, which invites U.S. suppliers such as Moore to pitch the megastore directly. The program is part of the company's commitment "to invest $350 billion in products made, grown or assembled in the U.S. by 2030." It took five minutes to apply for what he thought of as a needle-in-a-haystack opportunity, and then he forgot all about it. Months later, Moore received a phone call from Susan Thomas, a Walmart International Sourcing Manager, which changed his life. The Ugly Company had been selected from more than 2,000 applicants to come to Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, for a “Shark Tank”-inspired competition and meeting with buyers. Although they weren't ultimately chosen as one of 50 new Walmart suppliers in 2023, Sam’s Club did come through that year. Moore was selected for Open Call again in 2024, and this time, the dream came true. A deal offered to an entrepreneur at Open Call is referred to as "a golden ticket," and that's precisely what it turned into for him. In June, Moore took The Ugly Company on the road for Walmart's 2025 U.S. Manufacturing Fly-In, where he visited Washington D.C. with 14 other small business owners to visit Congressional offices and discuss the need for rural business growth and healthier food in American schools. Now, Moore is raising funds and seeking investors to further expand the company's product lines. He's doing this with the guidance of two Mendoza mentors who sit on his board. John Martin (BBA ’82),chairman of Notre Dame’s IDEA Center advisory board, and Walt Clements, his former Notre Dame MBA professor who helped him build The Ugly Company's financial model and inventory management strategy. "Business school is my foundation of knowledge," Moore said. "I came to Notre Dame to build a network of people who share my values, and I'm so proud and honored to have found that."