Below is a short report back to you, our amazing network, on how Food Recovery Network was able to recover close to 2,000 pounds of food for neighbors in Los Angeles experiencing food insecurity on the day of Super Bowl LVI. By being in FRN’s corner, you made this recovery a reality.

My fellow FRN team members Cassie and Erin flew with me to LA to provide on-the-ground support to recover surplus food from The Players Tailgate on February 13, 2022. The Players Tailgate is a massive event catered by celebrity chef Guy Fieri during the Super Bowl, a 50,000 square foot experience filled with decadent food stations run by Fieri’s chef friends.

After the Tailgate, as guests shuffled into SoFi stadium to watch the big game, it was go-time for the FRN team and our amazing volunteers, including an alum and members of the new FRN chapter at Chapman University. There was A LOT of food to recover. Our Instagram page has tons of content showing a behind the scenes look at the food recovery!

Had FRN not been there, so much unopened and unprepared seafood, pallets of butter, milk, bread, salad greens, onions, and herbs would have been unnecessarily discarded. However, because our longtime partners at Operation BBQ were involved in planning the logistics of the Players Tailgate, they contacted FRN to develop a plan to recover any surplus event food.

Operation BBQ asked us to set up a recovery program for the Tailgate just as we had done in 2020 for previous Operation BBQ events. We were able to say yes to this event because our partner, the National Association of REALTORS®, supported the financial costs to FRN to accomplish this recovery. Individual donations to FRN also ensure we can coordinate big recoveries like this one.

Once we confirmed, Operation BBQ connected us to the group organizing the Players Tailgate, Bullseye Event Group, to hash out the details of the recovery: when the event would be over and we could start packing up the food, what food would be donated, and where the food would be located within the event space.

Erin, FRN’s Program Manager, then began making calls to find nonprofit partner agencies who could receive the food (and there is so much that goes into that process!) and calls to our local chapters in the area who could help us on the ground with the actual recovery.

We partnered with Hollywood Food Coalition and the Westside Food Bank to distribute the amazing food we recovered from the Tailgate, and our local FRN chapter at Chapman University stepped up to volunteer at the event. Thank you to Hilary, Nicole, and Audrey! We were also joined by FRN alum and Secretary of FRN’s Student and Alumni Advisory Board, Alexi, and her mom.

Our joint effort was a huge success and brought more than 1,500 meals to the LA community.

There is so much more to share about the Players Tailgate recovery, and we recommend you check out our social media to see what we were up to during the Tailgate! We also received incredible media coverage at the event. Read this LA Times article and watch this ABC7LA video for a deeper look into what it takes to pull off a big food recovery.

Also, please consider being an individual donor or making an additional gift if you already contribute to our work so we can feed more people, faster! Your financial support ensures FRN can say yes to large scale recoveries by offsetting the costs to complete those recoveries.