FRN at the 2018 Food Rescue Summit: Where Will the Movement Go From Here?

On January 23-24, FRN’s Alumni Programs VISTA, Sarah Diamond, and Program and Resource Development Fellow, Paul Sherman, attended Feeding America’s Food Rescue Summit in Washington, D.C. They met with leaders from government agencies, nonprofits, food banks, and food waste startups to discuss the many facets of food rescue. On Day 2 of the summit, they spoke on a panel entitled “Raising Awareness and Creating Advocates Across Generations” with Kris Sadens of ATTN:, Kate MacKenzie of City Harvest, and moderator Blythe Chorn of Deloitte Consulting LLP. They represented FRN and a growing generation of young food waste warriors. After the summit, they worked with the George Washington University FRN chapter to recover 54 pounds of food from the summit and deliver it to the Central Union Mission, one of GW’s partner agencies.

The following are their thoughts on the summit and where they think the movement will go from here.

Sarah Diamond:

The opening speech at Feeding America’s Food Rescue Summit in Washington, D.C. left me with chills. Andy Wilson, the Development Director of Feeding America, the third-largest charity organization in America, talked about work he had done to feed people in Russia during the heart of the Cold War, when more than 70% of the Russian population had fallen into destitute poverty in a matter of months. He was part of the team that delivered huge pallets of perishable and non-perishable food items to people in the heart of Siberia. A pallet of food that was about to pass its expiration date was seen as a potential threat, and, unsure what to do, they decided to bury it so it couldn’t potentially harm people and wouldn’t have to be sent back. The next morning, Andy and his team found that the case had been dug up by local people to eat. It was in that moment that he knew that allowing food to be wasted in a place where people are hungry is a sin like no other.

The point of his story was that excess and destitution should never coexist in the same space — not in the Siberian tundra, not in the United States, not anywhere. Ensuring that food did not go to waste while people are hungry was the theme of the entire summit: companies, food waste organizations, food banks, and governmental employees convened here to discuss how we are going to put a stop to such a harmful yet pervasive issue in this world.

Panelists discussed big questions in the food waste space, such as: how are we going to feed people now while also addressing the root causes of hunger? How do we recover food now, while also realizing that food recovery is more of a band-aid than a long-term solution? What are the implications of all this?

After listening to speakers who have been working in the areas of food waste, hunger, or food recovery for years, I had the opportunity to present my story on a panel. I talked about the time I spent co-leading my Food Recovery Network chapter at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, one of the country’s northernmost cities with a population of about 75,000 people. On some days that we dropped off food that would have been thrown away from our dining hall at our partner agencies — we worked with a Boys and Girls club, a homeless shelter, a church, and a soup kitchen — the lobby would be filled with people, doing whatever they could to get out of the below zero temperatures of the harsh upper midwest. My own experiences with food recovery connected back to Andy Wilson’s story in Russia so closely, and it really solidified how stomach-churning and cruel it is to throw out food when there are so many hungry people. I knew it when I saw those lobbies full of people at my partner agencies and I knew it again when I heard Andy speak: eradicating hunger and homelessness will always be my personal and professional bottom lines. In a world that is so full of excess and so full of such great need, it is absolutely our moral obligation to do everything we can to close the gap that exists between them.

Paul Sherman:

Attending Feeding America’s Food Rescue Summit and sharing my experiences in a breakout session reenergized me on several levels. It’s reassuring to know that my generation of anti-food waste advocates is supported by experts from different industries. As I enter the workforce with the intention of ending food waste and combating hunger and food insecurity, it is exciting to know that I am entering a new, emerging field. That said, I also hope this is a dying field; every day, I aim to work myself out of a job. As a young professional, that’s a difficult idea to come to terms with, but a powerful one no less.

I still remember sitting in my dining hall during my freshman year in 2014 at the University of Denver, watching a dining employee take a tray full of chocolate chip cookies at the end of lunch and dumping it in the trash. Even if I wasn’t personally going to eat them, I felt strongly that these cookies should be fed to a person, not a landfill. Today, part of the reason this disturbs me is knowing that the same thing is happening with all different kinds of food: so long as it’s leftover, the understood next step is to throw it away. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had the ability to affect positive change within the culture that made it acceptable for disposal of surplus food to be the normal course of action.

Four years later, I’m as confident as ever that we can change these destructive behaviors. At the Food Rescue Summit, I learned about innovative ways to combat food waste. For instance, Spoiler Alert makes it easier for food businesses to recover the value from their unsold inventory. By using real-time data, they identify existing waste reduction and diversion efforts while identifying new outlets for food donation. Representatives from the World Wildlife Fund spoke about their efforts to reduce food waste because of its direct negative effects on wildlife across the globe. The 19-year-old in me who was dismayed by a tray of cookies being thrown away would be proud to know that in 2018, companies and organizations are taking this issue to heart.

In his closing presentation, author Jonathan Bloom acknowledged a harsh reality that we in the food rescue movement face: food recovery is temporary. When we are successful in finding an end to wasted food in America, we will need to come up with new ways to combat hunger and food insecurity. Ironically, after two days of discussing food rescue, Bloom warned us against an overemphasis on recycling of food rather than the reduction of wasted food in the first place. Yes, food rescue keeps people fed, but we must be true to both sides of the coin: fighting waste and feeding people. I wonder, what’s next after we address the root causes of wasted food? How can we continue to ensure that hunger and food insecurity are core issues in this movement, even when we don’t have any food to redistribute?

I look forward to continuing to grapple with these questions. I hope that we continue to have conversations with our peers about how to best tackle food waste, hunger, and food insecurity. After all, I think people are finally waking up to the fact that food waste is a tangible and solvable issue, one that we can’t afford to ignore.

Food Recovery Verified, a program of FRN, is changing the perspective of surplus food in America

Did you know that, in addition to the higher education sector, Food Recovery Network supports businesses and event organizers that do the right thing with their surplus food? FRN remains a student-powered movement, but under the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act, all food donors are free of liability if they donate food in good faith to a nonprofit organization. Now think about what that means; the hotel you stayed at last summer with your family, the pizza place you order takeout from, the catering company from your cousin’s wedding, and your favorite local cafe can all recover their surplus food and donate it to those who need it most in their communities.

FRN’s reach now goes far beyond universities. Food Recovery Verified (FRV), a program of FRN established in 2014, recognizes food businesses and events that recover their surplus food and donate it to a nonprofit. Food recovery is a crucial part of a food system in which 40% of food that is produced goes to waste while 1 in 6 Americans does not know where their next meal is coming from.

We want to introduce our network to the businesses and events that recover their surplus food and ensure their stories are shared. FRV gives these businesses and events that recognition. Any food business that recovers food at least once a month and donates to a nonprofit organization qualifies to become verified. FRV accounts, which now span 15 sectors, across 32 states, are changing the way businesses, employees, and consumers perceive food waste.

FRN is growing thanks to the constant support of passionate college students and the hard work put in by nearly 100 verified accounts across the nation. In the coming months, we will be featuring stories on our blog that highlight various Food Recovery Verified accounts and events. Stay tuned to learn more about these incredible businesses and events and the organizations where they donate their surplus food! If you know of a great business or event doing the right thing with their surplus food, or want to learn more about starting a recovery program, reach out to us at foodrecoveryverified@foodrecoverynetwork.org.

Together, we will change the norm from food waste to food recovery!

#FRNSpeaks: University of Delaware, Fruit Ninja, and New Chapter Operations

My name is Rachel Cohen and I’m a junior Energy and Environmental Policy major at the University of Delaware. At UD, I’m involved in the Blue Hen Leadership Program, a four tiered leadership program aiming to build students’ leadership skills and encourage opportunities to engage in community service. It was through BHLP that I was able to get to know junior Public Health major Jaime Renman when she led a group of my peers and myself on a spring break trip to Baltimore, Maryland. The trip was focused on urban hunger and revitalization. We spent the week volunteering our time preparing urban farms for growth, working with nonprofits that aimed to rejuvenate the city, and walking the streets of inner city Baltimore giving brown-bagged lunches to homeless folks. Getting to know Jaime during this trip exposed her dedication to service and her passion for public health. These traits continue to guide her as she leads the University of Delaware chapter of the Food Recovery Network.

E-board members Erika Opena, Jaime Renman, and Robin Norko volunteering at the chapter’s 2016 food drive, where the chapter rounded up 98 pounds of food. This year, they surpassed their goal of 100 pounds by collecting 205 pounds!

Jaime reflects on her high school “fruit ninja” job at her local Acme, where she spent hours chopping fruits and vegetables. She remarks on the guilt she felt about the sizable amount of viable produce that she had to throw away. Not only were the chopping techniques inherently wasteful, but she was also told to throw away bruised and imperfect food. This experience sparked an energy in Jaime which catalyzed her passion for fighting food waste. She went on her first alternative spring break trip focused on urban hunger during her freshman year. As a result, Jaime became aware of health disparities surrounding food waste, expressing, “Wow… there are people who live in food deserts and can’t even access healthy food, and yet I’m surrounded by these huge supermarkets where I can buy anything I want and usually waste a lot.” The trip opened Jaime’s eyes to her passion about doing service and helped her identify her values. She returned to campus with a refreshing attitude: “I was like, okay! How do I continue this?”

Lucky for Jaime, the answer sort of fell into her lap. Her resident assistant from freshman year was the vice president and a founding member of FRN at UD, and all but two of the executive board members were set to graduate at the end of the year. Jaime went on a recovery and said to herself, “I don’t really know a lot about FRN, but it seems like a cool initiative and a leadership position to continue service about food insecurity which I’m passionate about.” She became the president her sophomore year and describes the process of taking on the position as being initially quite difficult. There wasn’t a smooth transition in leadership, and Jaime didn’t know where to begin with an e-board that was mostly new to food recovery and her own minimal knowledge about leading a group.

FRN at UD attended the National Food Recovery Dialogue and came back to campus energized, motivated, and inspired with new ways to help spread the mission of FRN.

She says she “had to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.” She forged new relationships and took over communication with UD Dining that had been halted by the e-board members who graduated before her. “I put on my best professional manner and put my passion into it and drive and commitment. That’s what I could give.” She observed how only a portion of the past e-board members were really present so she emphasized that dedication from the newe-board would support the club to grow sustainably. Jaime and her e-board team became more educated about the causes, details, and effects of food waste and began utilizing asset-based approaches that hone the skills of the individual members.  “And it ended up working out,” she says with a wide smile on her face. “Empowering other students and inspiring them to become more aware or to get involved with FRN has been the most rewarding.”

FRN at UD currently recovers food from one of three dining halls on campus. Twice a week, an e-board member and 2 volunteers load the already packaged, frozen food into soft coolers for a representative from the Food Bank of Delaware to pick up. One of the students submits the pounds of food recovered and other data to FRN National.

Although they are recovering less food than in past semesters, the UD chapter maintains relationships with other hunger-fighting nonprofits by informing them that the donations will be back once they recruit more volunteers and have the capacity to recover more frequently. The FRN Chapter held a food drive in Fall 2017 and surpassed their goal by accumulating 205 pounds of non perishables. In order to say, “we still care about you and we still want to donate to you” as Jaime eagerly puts it, they delivered all the food they recovered from the drive to these nonprofits.

The UD chapter is working on reaching out to local restaurants to recover more food. Jaime and Jaclyn Romano, the VP of Restaurant Donations, have begun fostering relationships to start recovering food from local restaurants in the near future. Jaclyn is the point of contact between FRN and local restaurants, seeking to foster relationships to increase food donations. She says that her biggest challenge with the position was “the fear of being brushed off by restaurants” due to anxiety that she would sound insecure and awkward when going to speak to restaurant managers. “Jaime,” Jaclyn says, “was my biggest motivator. I was losing motivation, and Jaime pushed me. We went together to talk to managers of restaurants.” Jaclyn’s perspective transformed. “I realized how awesome of an idea people think FRN is. Every manager I spoke to was so passionate for the idea and didn’t hesitate to want to be involved.” Jaclyn can’t wait to see the club initiating more recoveries in Spring 2018.

E-board members Macy Oteri, Jaime Renman, and Izzy Aswad pose with produce that is rejected due to its imperfections at the NFRD conference.

In efforts to increase membership, the e-board members first began speaking to classrooms about FRN, the mission, and how to join the movement. Their member turnout at meetings significantly increased as a result. Jaclyn says their meetings began with just the e-board, “to now having a genuine group of people that are really interested and want to be involved.” They’ve formed committees, made up of a few students led by a member of the e-board, who work to find more donation sources, more hunger-fighting nonprofits to receive food, and other ways to promote food waste education. Other techniques to increase awareness and membership include handing out facts about food waste with a piece of candy in the student centers and asking food waste trivia questions to passersby to engage the community in a quick and fun way. Jaime has even had dreams about the future success of the UD FRN chapter. “I think there are really good things coming. I have to stay motivated and we have to keep motivating each other and keep building the movement,” she says. 

On a personal level, “FRN definitely built my leadership skills in terms of learning how to work on a team and how I work in a team,” says Jaime. Additionally, the position has improved her communication, professionalism, and courage. She has realized that it doesn’t hurt to go out there and seek food donations, because “the worst people can say is ‘no’.” Leading this transformative process has shown Jaime that she has the power to impact positive change. Her experience in FRN “shows that this generation cares a lot and that we’re on a positive trajectory.”

Alumni Spotlight: Rebecca Leighton, University of Minnesota Twin Cities '16

Our December Alumni Spotlight is Rebecca Leighton, a 2017 graduate of the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities. In her third year as an undergraduate, where she studied Dietetics and Nutrition, Rebecca founded her school’s Food Recovery Network chapter. Though she was “met with a lot of resistance initially”  her “experience leading this initiative taught [her] to persevere in order to do something [she] believed in.” We’re thrilled to feature Rebecca in the Alumni Spotlight because the passion she fostered during her time with FRN has led her to amazing places where she continues that original mission - to fight waste and feed people.

Rebecca’s favorite FRN memory is of her very first recovery, where she and her team of about fifteen students recovered 32 pounds of food. Her FRN team has come a long way since then - they now recover at least one hundred pounds at each recovery. She says, “It was amazing to see such quick growth in something that I had worked so hard at starting.” The ability to persevere, learn from her mistakes, and keep going despite obstacles after founding and leading a successful FRN chapter, she says, is what gave her the confidence to follow her dreams of creating a food pantry, called Nutritious U, on campus after graduation. Today, she runs that program while also working toward her master’s degree in public health and nutrition.

As tuition rates climb and students find themselves choosing between textbooks and food, more food pantries are being established on college and university campuses across the country. As the director of Nutritious U, Rebecca has a number of responsibilities. She orders thousands of pounds of food each month, organizes the shelves, staffs the pantry, reaches out to food insecure students, and coordinates a leadership team of 10 students and additional volunteers.  In the near future, Rebecca is hoping to set up a streamlined process with University of Minnesota Twin Cities FRN Chapter, so recovered food from the dining hall can be delivered to Nutritious U. Rebecca also coordinates the meal donation program Swipe Out Hunger on her campus and teaches students about health and well-being, such as cooking classes.

To current FRN students, Rebecca says, “Stay strong, keep persisting, and keep growing.  Never let anyone tell you that you can't do what you are passionate about.” You never know where the hard work of establishing a chapter could lead you; as in Rebecca’s case, it could be in a master’s program, directing a food pantry, and transforming hundreds if not thousands of lives with healthy, warm meals.

Thanks for everything you do, Rebecca!

Are you an FRN alumnus? If so, we want to stay in touch! Fill out the Alumni Survey on our website here.  You just might be featured in our upcoming spotlight series!

Have questions/comments about our growing alumni network? Contact Sarah Diamond, Alumni Programs VISTA, at alumni@foodrecoverynetwork.org

Alumni Spotlight: Kelsey Rogers, Roger Williams University '17

Food Recovery Network is working to build its first-ever alumni network to offer resources and connection opportunities to FRN alumni hoping to stay engaged in food recovery efforts beyond graduation. As part of this, we will be showcasing an exceptional FRN alumnus each month who exemplifies leadership, teamwork, and community engagement in our Alumni Spotlight series.

Our first featured alumnus is Kelsey Rogers, a 2017 graduate of Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. Kelsey founded the RWU FRN chapter in April 2014, and recalls her favorite FRN memory as bonding with her team as they drove to shelters to deliver food during the team’s early days as a Chapter In Progress (CHIP). She says, “It was nights like these that I can look back on fondly and see just how far I’ve come.” Since then, RWU FRN has recovered more than 21,000 pounds of food and has fostered countless meaningful relationships on the campus and beyond. As the chapter president, Kelsey worked to expand her chapter’s capacity through attending a series of food waste events. During these events, she connected with like-minded individuals with whom she would start Phood, a food waste tracking company.

Phood is a commercial food waste prevention company that works with more than twenty institutions nationwide to reduce waste, find donation solutions, and engage communities in food recovery. Kelsey is the Food Recovery Specialist at Phood, where she develops software to make food recovery easier for clients. She also serves as the lead graphic designer, designing the look of their different tablet platforms, making marketing materials and designing the Phood website. Check out Kelsey’s graphic design page for more information here.

“Through FRN,” she says, “I was able to realize my passion for fighting food waste and hunger. Since then, my passion has guided every decision I make. FRN has given me the confidence to pursue my dream job, and the leadership experience to get there.”

Congratulations and thank you, Kelsey, for all you have done to fight waste and feed people in college and beyond!

Are you an FRN alumnus? If so, we want to stay in touch! Fill out the Alumni Survey on our website here.  You just might be featured in our upcoming spotlight series!

Have questions/comments about our growing alumni network? Contact Sarah Diamond, Alumni Programs VISTA, at alumni@foodrecoverynetwork.org.