With the new year approaching, now is a great time to visualize the year ahead, manifest, and sketch out a plan to reach your big goals. At Food Recovery Network (FRN), we want to see more events prioritizing food recovery in 2024! Why should food recovery be a priority at your next event? Read on!

Sustainability and Social Impact

Climate change is widely acknowledged as the greatest modern threat to humanity, so it’s no surprise that governments, companies, and individuals worldwide are taking action to reduce carbon emissions. The event industry is no exception. In recent years, sustainability has become a key component of event planning, and data shows that aside from transportation, food service is responsible for the majority of carbon emissions generated by events. For event planners seeking to create a more sustainable event, reducing food loss and waste should be a top priority, and having a food recovery program in place is the solution to meet that need. 

Not only does food recovery help prevent excess carbon emissions by keeping food out of landfills, but it also helps fight hunger by providing good food to people experiencing food insecurity. Food recovery creates both sustainable and social impact to help your company meet its environmental and community-centered goals. 

Through FRN’s Food Recovery Verified (FRV) program, our organization partners with businesses and event planners to help them establish food recovery programs from their events. Since 2021, FRN has experienced a 71% increase in inquiries from companies and organizations seeking food recovery support for their events, and we want to ensure that trend continues! So, how can you prioritize food recovery at your next event? Let’s dig in! 

How to make food recovery a priority

solidify Company Commitment

To start, your event staff and company executives must be equally committed to food recovery. Successful food recovery programs require collaboration from your event venue and/or food service provider, and sometimes it takes convincing to get them on board. This is much easier to accomplish when there is buy-in from everyone involved in the vetting and selection of venues and food service providers. 

initiate conversations with vendors

With the full commitment from your team, your company can prioritize food recovery when initiating conversations with venues and food service providers. If vendors aren’t willing to engage in food recovery efforts, your team can point to your sustainable and social goals, close the conversation, and seek other vendors to work with. If you’ve already signed a contract and your vendor pushes back incorporating food recovery into the event, get your executive leadership involved in the conversation. They can help to keep the pressure on the vendor to accommodate the program.

Of course, we often find that vendors’ concerns around food recovery can be mitigated through education and transparency with the logistical planning. As you jump into these conversations, check out FRN’s Resource Hub for information about liability protection, how-to guides, and more!

simplify the food recovery process for vendors

Finally, when you have the buy-in from your vendors, it’s helpful to make the food recovery process as easy as possible for vendors to participate. Here are some quick tips: 

• Provide your vendors with food recovery supplies 

• Find a hunger-fighting partner to take your donation

• Schedule a donation pick up directly from your venue

Eventually, food recovery will become a natural part of your event planning process, built in alongside other sustainable initiatives like recycling and composting. However, if the process feels overwhelming or you don’t know where to start, hire FRN to coordinate the program! Food recovery is what we do, and we’d love to help ensure you have a waste-free event.

Take action

Feeling inspired? Make food recovery a priority for your events in 2024!

FRN is proud to work with a variety of businesses and organizations to support their food recovery efforts, and we’ve been thrilled to see the long-term impact that some of our recurring partners have had.

Consider working with FRN to organize your food recovery efforts so you can focus on planning your event, which takes a lot!

For inquiries or more information, contact FRN’s Food Recovery Verified team: foodrecoveryverified@foodrecoverynetwork.org. We’re ready to help you reach your company’s sustainability and social impact goals this year!