Written by Allison Cook

Disclaimer: The events described in the following blog post took place before the COVID-19 pandemic and are in no way related to restaurant closings for public safety. 

Western Kentucky University's Chapter of Food Recovery Network recently accomplished our greatest recovery since our formation in 2019. A local restaurant in Bowling Green, KY suddenly found themselves in a difficult position when they were asked to close their doors for good. With said closure being on such short notice, they had a plethora of restaurant grade food and non-perishables that would have gone to waste, if not for the restaurant's manager reaching out to WKU’s Office of Sustainability. In turn, the Office of Sustainability asked my fellow members of our Food Recovery Network chapter if such a large-scale recovery would be possible. Of course, our chapter of Food Recovery Network took on the challenge to make sure all the restaurant's supplies were not wasted and put to good use.  

With only two days' notice, we stepped up and volunteered to recover the food and to find appropriate uses for it all. On Wednesday February 26th, members of our chapter went to the restaurant and recovered over 1,050 pounds of food. For reference, in our first year, we recovered about 1,600 pounds of food. Recovering this much food at once was an incredible feat, but it was only half the battle. Trying to find locations to take on this much food at once was challenging, but finally after a few phone calls and some creative thinking, all the food was put to good use.  

Most perishable food items were immediately brought to Meals Inc in Bowling Green and to Room In The Inn, which is a day shelter for homeless individuals. Along with the perishable food, WKU’s Food Recovery was given various nonperishable cooking essentials that they donated to Christ Episcopal Church, which frequently prepares free lunches for members of the community. 

Even with all our local donations, we still had a surplus of food from this massive recovery. During this time of plenty, hearts weighed heavy over the effects of the tornados that hit Nashville, TN in early February. The wave of catastrophe was felt by the citizens of Bowling Green and by the students at WKU. I thought of no better use for our supplies than donating them to relief groups in Nashville trying to mend their community back together. Two members of WKU Food Recovery took it upon themselves to travel to Nashville and donate the remaining  food to the Nashville Rescue Mission and to Operation BBQ Relief.  

One of those members was our very own chapter president Elaine Losekamp, who also serves as the Food Recovery Verified Events intern for FRN. Food Recovery Verified is a program that provides a verification status to events and food businesses that have food recovery programs in place for surplus food they may produce.  For almost all FRV events, FRV employees help organize the food recovery programs by creating individual plans for food recoveries from events and finding nonprofit agencies that are willing to take the food. Elaine, with the help of Erin Price, the Food Recovery Verified Events Fellow at FRN, made the connection from our chapter to Operation BBQ Relief in Nashville during this trying time. OBR, which began partnering with FRN in 2019 to develop food recovery plans for some of OBR’s events, deploys teams of volunteers who serve BBQ in areas of the country affected by natural disasters.  In early March 2020, OBR had just deployed volunteers in Nashville when they asked Erin to help them find nonprofits that could take any extra BBQ that was left over at the end of their deployment.  Erin introduced Elaine to contacts at OBR and asked her to find a nonprofit in Nashville for their food recovery; this introduction resulted in OBR agreeing to take surplus sauces that from the WKU chapter’s recovery from the restaurant in Bowling Green. 

This recovery was the greatest food recovery for our chapter, not only by the mass amount of food that did not go to waste, but because of the many ways we were able to help our community, and our neighbors in Nashville. WKU Food Recovery has worked with organizations such as Meals Inc and Room In The Inn before, but this massive recovery allowed us to reach out to other non-profits and expand our reach. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of many collaborations between the restaurants of Bowling Green and WKU’s chapter of Food Recovery Network to fight food waste and food insecurity in our community.