Feeding Massachusetts: Food Rescue

Photo by Michael Piazza

The term food rescue sounds a bit like superheroes swooping in to rescue food, to save it from its own demise—and, as it happens, that scenario is closer to reality than you might think. Startled by the volume of food being thrown away (an estimated 35% of all food in the U.S., according to ReFED) and horrified by the number of people going hungry (1.6 million people in Massachusetts alone), local “superhero” individuals have found ways to rescue unused food and connect it to people who need it through grassroots efforts and nonprofit organizations.

Why should we care? By January 2021, rates of food insecurity in MA had increased by 55% since 2019 and were highest among people of color and adults with children, according to the Greater Boston Food Bank.

“Hunger is not an issue of supply but of distribution and access,” says Ashley Stanley, founder and executive director of Lovin’ Spoonfuls, an organization entirely devoted to food rescue. “If we reduce food waste only by 35% in the United States that amount of food would feed 50 million or so people—which is the number of people who are food compromised.” Since we first wrote about Lovin’ Spoonfuls in 2011, just a year after the organization began, Lovin’ Spoonfuls has rescued over 20 million pounds of food, 4 million of which was rescued in 2020.

In previous issues (and online) we’ve featured Lovin’ Spoonfuls, Food for Free (which delivers food to low-income Cambridge residents who are unable to access food pantries due to disability or chronic illness), Nourishing the North Shore (which rescues food from school lunches) and the Boston Area Gleaners (which collects food from area farms), all well-known players in the MA food rescue world; visit our website to read more about them. For this story, we’ve focused on just a few of the many food rescue organizations in Greater Boston and Worcester County. All are nonprofits and accept donations; many depend on volunteers to collect or distribute food throughout their communities.

FAIR FOODS

Fair Foods of Dorchester works with wholesale produce distributors (companies that supply grocery stores) plus other businesses like Amazon to rescue food; they then give it away to local food pantries or sell it at $2 per bag to those who want it.

According to Nancy Jamison, the nonprofit’s founder, Fair Foods distributes 5 million pounds of food every year, primarily produce and bread. The organization supplies over 200 pantries, churches, meal programs and after-school programs and works with the City of Boston’s food access program to supply local immigrant populations with fresh food.

Jamison started the organization and her food bag program over 30 years ago to take food that would otherwise be thrown away and give it to those who are hungry. The day we spoke, the bags contained potatoes, onions, broccoli, oranges, summer squash, spinach and grapes or strawberries, all for only $2.

“I’m dealing with very poor people,” she says, adding that if someone is counting coins or doesn’t have enough money, ‘We’ll say, “Here’s an extra bag, pay us next time.”’ So they have their dignity.”

According to Jamison, 400 volunteers at about 85 locations around Boston sort the food and pack up the bags, which feed 10,000 families per week. “We don’t require any identification for people,” she says. With help from the City of Boston’s food access program, Fair Foods moved into a warehouse in South Boston this spring.

“My goal is to get people healthy,” Jamison says, by giving access to fresh produce to people who would otherwise not be able to afford it.

FOOD LINK

Food Link of Arlington was created in 2012 to rescue food and to deliver it to community organizations that feed those in need. When Food Link’s founders, Julie Kremer and DeAnne Dupont, discovered the need for food rescue, they asked for donations from Trader Joe’s and then donated the food to a low-income housing facility in Arlington.

“Many food businesses were willing to donate food [while] local nonprofits were struggling to get the food,” says Elise Springuel, program manager of Food Link. Again, distribution was the hurdle. Last year the organization rescued and distributed 1.2 million pounds of food with help from over 200 active volunteers.

During COVID, Minuteman High School in Lexington approached Food Link with an idea for a partnership. “We bring them ingredients and the culinary students make them into individually frozen meals and then we distribute the meals,” Springuel says.

Food Link’s goal is to keep growing its impact. In March 2021, Food Link’s new building, the Hub, opened with a loading dock to accommodate large food deliveries, expanded cold storage and food sorting space. Springuel says the Hub will allow the organization to expand its food rescue capacity to 2 million pounds per year.

INTERFAITH SOCIAL SERVICES

“We’ve been doing food rescue for several decades,” says Rick Doane of Interfaith Social Services in Quincy. But it wasn’t until 2008 that things ramped up. “We were only rescuing 100,000 pounds per year at that time,” he says, but as more people began reaching out for food during the recession, social media brought more attention to the organization. Then in 2014, MA passed a law banning the disposal of commercial organic waste. Doane says that once they could no longer throw away unsold food, more businesses wanted to partner with them. “That was pivotal,” he says.

This year, Interfaith will rescue 500,000 pounds of food and distribute it through its food pantry in Quincy. “Our truck will be on the road in the morning, then boxes are unloaded and food put in a bag and right into a client’s car,” Doane says.

While Interfaith pays its drivers to collect the food, it relies on volunteers to sort it, check dates and labels and make sure the food is still good, and encourages backyard farmers to share some of their own harvest with the food pantry as part of their Plant.Grow.Share program.

“We benefit from the inefficiencies of the supermarket,” Doane says. So when the supermarket gets better at ordering and reduces the amount of leftover food, there’s less food waste. “We would love to be rescuing more,” he says, adding that it takes the commitment of a store manager to make that happen.

RACHEL’S TABLE

“Rachel’s Table is an organization that just makes sense,” says Carla Szymanski, director of Rachel’s Table. “We [get] food from people who have too much and bring it to people who don’t have enough.”

Founded in 1989, the organization collects food donated from markets, companies, restaurants, caterers, bakeries, schools, senior centers, a horticultural garden and individuals and distributes it to 30 agencies in the Worcester area with the help of volunteers. “Most [of the] food that we pick up would be thrown away if not donated,” Szymanski says.

Since the pandemic began, Szymanski says, they’ve purchased 1,300 pounds of produce every week for seven food pantries, a soup kitchen and a meal program to help these organizations have enough food for their clients.

“Some agencies, such as group homes and shelters, are not working with strictly food aid clients but are trying to feed people they are helping,” Szymanski says. There are community groups that get together to cook a meal that is then brought to a shelter. Even some pizzerias prepare food to donate directly to organizations through Rachel’s Table.

In addition to food rescue, Rachel’s Table purchases and delivers 1,000 gallons of milk to 21 social service agencies every week as part of its Children’s Milk Fund.

“At Rachel’s Table we feel that everyone has the right to have enough food to eat and there’s no reason for anyone in our country to go hungry,” Szymanski says.

SPUR

“Feeding someone is an easy way to have a positive impact on someone’s life,” Kim Nothnagel says. Nothnagel works for SPUR, a Marblehead organization created to connect people with ways to make a positive impact on their community through volunteering.

With its Meal Service program (food prepared by volunteers and donated to local shelters) and Community Roots garden (last year they donated 900 pounds of fresh produce grown by volunteers to local food pantries), SPUR was already doing a lot to reduce food insecurity on the North Shore before Doug Shube of Shubie’s Marketplace in Marblehead approached the organization. “He said, ‘We have all this food that goes to waste every day; what can we do?’” Nothnagel says.

“We had the tools, the volunteers, the infrastructure as well as the partners in the community that could benefit from the food.” So SPUR created a program to rescue unsold food from Shubie’s and find a home for it, and in January 2019 the program was up and running.

Now volunteers pick up leftover prepared food and baked goods from Shubie’s and deliver it directly to organizations in Lynn, Marblehead, Salem and Swampscott. “The organizations that we deliver to serve diverse populations and include food pantries, organizations that support survivors of domestic abuse, people in substance abuse recovery, adults with disabilities, and youth in the child welfare system,” Nothnagel says.

By September 2019, over 1,500 pounds of food had been rescued. Nothnagel estimates that number is now over 3,000 pounds.

CENTRAL MA FOOD RESCUE

When Ben Sigel’s career was delayed due to COVID after his 2020 graduation from business school in Atlanta, he founded Central MA Food Rescue in his hometown of Westborough, a 501(c)(3) focused on rescuing unsold crops from farms in Central Massachusetts and delivering them to food banks. He started a grassroots fundraising campaign in July 2020 and by August he had rented a U-Haul truck to pick up a first shipment of 1,500 pounds of potatoes, carrots and butternut squash each week to deliver to soup kitchens, food pantries and food banks across the state.

By April 2021, Central MA Food Rescue had given “tens of thousands of pounds of food to every major food bank across MA,” Sigel says.

Sigel works with Joe Czajkowski, a farmer in Hadley, to glean as well as purchase fresh produce. So far, Czajkowski has been able to meet all of Central MA Food Rescue’s needs. “He’s been very generous,” Sigel says.

Sigel has plans to rebrand and expand the nonprofit to other parts of the country and to add a food ordering system where a food bank or food pantry can request a volume of fresh produce and a donor can sign up to pay for it. “We’re all volunteers so every dollar given goes to food.”

Because food insecurity is so pervasive, Sigel says it’s important to support any organization that is doing that kind of work by volunteering or donating. “I really would encourage all readers to go out and make a difference in their communities. Just think creatively and try and help where help is needed.”

“In the Greater Boston area there’s a vibrant ecosystem of food rescue,” says Springuel of Food Link. “Food waste and hunger are such big issues. … We can’t do it alone.”

To donate your time, money or food, visit:

bostonareagleaners.org
centralmafoodrescue.com
fairfoods.org
foodforfree.org
foodlinkma.org
interfaithsocialservices.org
lovinspoonfulsinc.org
nourishingthenorthshore.org
rachelstable.org
refed.com
spur.community