In the Spotlight: Food Recovery Verified in Las Vegas

by Stephen Dorsey

When you think of Las Vegas, Nevada, you may think of bright lights, bustling tourists, and people hoping to score big in the casinos. When I arrived last month, I was thinking about an amazing chance to help our hunger-fighting partners score surplus food for their programs. 

Last month, Julia Gerard and I arrived in Las Vegas to support the event staff and culinary teams at the University Medical Center (UMC) Foundation: Evening of Hope Gala. The Evening Hope Gala raised funds to enhance the healing environment for the most in-need patients at UMC and UMC Children’s Hospital within the Las Vegas community. Food Recovery Network's involvement in the gala meant that the Foundation could focus on celebrating patients and donors while we ensured that any surplus food from the event was recovered!

All too often, larger events like galas, conferences, and sporting events generate an overabundance of food that is then is unnecessarily thrown away instead of going to individuals experiencing hunger. Our Food Recovery Verified (FRV) program is a great way to ensure that any event, from a conference to a fundraising gala, is sustainable by putting a food recovery plan in place for any food left over. As part of our Food Recovery Verified program, we offer full-service onsite support to events larger than 200 people to manage all of the logistics of the food recovery. From transportation to supplies, experienced FRN staff fully manage the food collection and donation process.

At the Evening of Hope Gala, Julia and I got to speak to the culinary teams about the food recovery process and creating a zero food waste event. We were inspired by how receptive and supportive all of the teams were of FRN’s mission. At the conclusion of the event, FRN staff collected and loaded surplus food from the culinary teams, and we transported a total of 117 pounds of food, equivalent to 98 meals, to the Las Vegas Rescue Mission. We are thrilled that we were able to help recover surplus food from the Evening of Hope Gala and route it to a local non-profit partner agency making a difference in the Las Vegas community.

FRN launched our FRV program as a way to help businesses create a food recovery program for your corporate dining and events and highlight your commitment to sustainability and supporting your community. Please reach out to us if you are interested in retaining our services at your event!

Meet Chris, FRN's new Program Assistant

All of us at FRN are thrilled to welcome Chris DePiazza as one of the newest members of our team! Chris is FRN’s Program Assistant, using his insight as a college student and an intern with FRN in summer 2022 to continue strengthening our programs and propelling the food recovery movement further.

About Chris

Chris started his work with FRN as a Maryland Public Service Scholars Fellow this summer. Chris is interested in becoming involved with food justice, so the work that FRN engages in stood out to him immediately. Chris is currently studying at Mount St. Mary’s University (go Mount!), working towards a B.A. in Sociology, a B.S. in Economics, and a Spanish minor. At the Mount, Chris is involved on campus in the Center for Service (formerly the Office of Social Justice) and the CORE Leadership Program, introducing him to professional community service by making deep connections with community partners and organizations and by leading service experiences for students. During Summer 2021, Chris had the opportunity to intern in the Volunteer Engagement Office at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, where he was professionally introduced into the nonprofit sector. Outside of school and work, Chris enjoys playing the piano, trying to improve his cooking skills, listening to music (constantly), and spending time with friends. Chris is very excited to learn, grow, and help people in this new position!

7 Questions ✨

What are three traits that define you?

• Outgoing, cheerful, energetic

Where do you consider your home?

• St. Mary’s County, Maryland

What is your favorite meal?

• Probably either a reuben or sushi

What is your most used emoji?

• The disoriented emoji with the swirly eyes 😵‍💫

What is the one thing you cannot live without?

• I could not live without showers

What profession would you never try?

• I could never be a middle school teacher

What interests/excites you about FRN's work?

• I was super excited to be able to join FRN because of the unique way FRN enables different groups of people to engage in work related to food justice, sustainability, and environmental justice. The community and relationships that FRN has created in their network is amazing!

You have the right to vote, and you have the right to navigate your feelings around it

Last week, FRN hosted a conversation about the many feelings we have around the act of voting, and discussed why these feelings are valid. But why is talking about our feelings around voting so important? Because how many times do we feel a certain way about something, big or small, which leads us to…not act? When it comes to voting, we must find a way to understand and validate our feelings in order to push past any desire for inaction to get into the habit of voting.

Moderator Angela Lin facilitated a conversation with Tony Eskridge and Dominique Mitchell that was insightful, full of important context, and most importantly, moving – moving in the sense that we wanted everyone listening in to know that we are all in this together, and moving in that we need everyone to move to actually vote. Our philosophy is that it doesn’t matter who you vote for, but voting during the mid-term and general elections is critical to ensure your demands are heard.

Food Recovery Network is amplifying the voices of nonpartisan organizations like Ohio Voice, the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice (including their project  Poor People’s Campaign),  and ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, where, respectively, Angela, Tony, and Dominique each work. We are magnifying the work of these organizations because voting is a critical way to express our demands to end poverty. Ending poverty means curtailing the root cause of social inequities like food insecurity, housing insecurity, and medical debt that are costing all of us so much.

I hope you have an opportunity to listen to this conversation. We covered a lot of ground, talking about how we can address and lift up our feelings around voting, and also diving into a variety of relevant topics. Angela reminded us that we need to talk about issues that affect us everyday, all year long, and build people power to enact long term change. Tony reminded us that voting is an expression of our demands – when enough of us vote on an issue that can eliminate food insecurity, we cannot be ignored. He talked about recent court decisions that have made it harder to register to vote and cast ballots, and that have increased voting lines. In light of these setbacks, we have to steady ourselves so that we do not lose our will to participate in electoral politics. Dominique shared her thoughts and resources on the student voting landscape to ensure we are prepared to vote, so we know how to register, know where to go, and understand how to vote the whole ballot.

Please let us know what you think about this conversation and most importantly, what questions you have after hearing from these leaders. This conversation is for you and we want to do all that we can to support your right to vote!

Reflections from the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health

by Dheeraj Bandaru

This September I had the chance to attend the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, the first conference of its kind since 1969. I was invited to fly out to Washington, DC for the conference and joined FRN’s Executive Director Regina Anderson, fellow Student and Alumni Advisory Board (SAAB) members, and local FRN chapter leaders for this historic event. 

I arrived at the conference at about 7:30am, went through the first round of security, and then went to check in at the registration table. Due to a registration issue, I had to wait in the atrium until it could be resolved. While waiting I ended up meeting the President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 1428, Mark Ramos. He told me more about the struggles of grocery and food workers who work around food all day but still can't afford to feed their families. He was invited to be a panelist at the White House Conference because he had started a food pantry at the union to provide groceries to his union members. 

After talking with Ramos, I got my registration approved and made my way to the second security line. This was run by the secret service as President Joe Biden would be speaking at the opening plenary of the conference. I found fellow FRN SAAB member Hunter, who would be representing SAAB at the conference. We listened to opening remarks from US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, President Joe Biden, Ambassador Susan Rice, Chairman Jim McGovern, Senator Cory Booker, and Senator Mike Braun. Then we joined one of five panel talks of the morning session, one for each pillar of the national strategy to end hunger by 2030. The five pillars are: 

1. Improving food access and affordability 

2. Integrating nutrition and health 

3. Empowering all consumers to make and have access to healthy choices 

4. Supporting physical activity for all

5. Enhancing nutrition and food security research. 

For the first session, we attended the pillar 5 panel and learned how experts are using research to guide policy and scale pilots to address hunger and food insecurity. The conversation was led by Senator Bill Frist and was very enlightening on how small pilot programs get funded and then can grow based on community needs. We learned about projects like Monty Village (Angela Odoms-Young), My Way Cafe (Ross Wilson), and Great Plates Delivered (Swati Chandra). I was surprised to find out that most K-12 students who are experiencing food insecurity get the majority of their calories at school, and therefore the quality of school meals is essential to the quality of life for children and families. A big theme throughout the entire conference was ensuring we are getting fresh, nutritious food to school-age children in the US. 

After the first panel, we met other conference attendees and speakers, including Senator Cory Booker who we snapped a photo with. As part of the afternoon plenary we attended a roundtable talk and a keynote speech from Chef Jose Andres. One of the most striking moments from the conference was when Andres said, "Charity is too often the redemption of the giver when it is supposed to be the liberation of the receiver." 

Throughout the whole conference I was inspired by how the organizers sought real action from each attendee. My favorite part of the conference were the small group working sessions, where we discussed tangible actions we could take with fellow attendees of the conference in an organized manner. During our small discussion group we talked about how the lack of transportation equity and transportation structures make it hard to serve many communities. During our conversation, the Second Gentleman of the United States, Douglas Emhoff, stopped by our conversation to listen and provide his own feedback.  

I had an amazing experience throughout the entire conference, and I really appreciate FRN for providing this opportunity to attend and meet so many amazing people in the food insecurity space. I will forever remember this experience and keep the lessons I learned from it close to me as I continue to be a part of the movement to end hunger in America by 2030. 

Why “bosses” should show up

It took about 30 months into my tenure as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of FRN, but on September 9, 2022 I reached a significant milestone as an FRN staffer: I participated in my first food recovery.

I am told by others who are more experienced in food recovery than me that my first recovery was impressive. Stephen and I recovered and donated over 1,200 pounds of food from the DaVita Dialysis Conference held at the Gaylord Hotel outside of Washington, D.C. This is the equivalent of almost 1,000 meals which will go to the men, women and children served by Central Union Mission. That is also nearly a one-to-one ratio of the food Central Union Mission needed to support one week of their program. Put differently, food that was otherwise going to be thrown away, less than 20 miles away, now helped feed an entire community, for an entire week. 

Once we delivered the food (and filled up their freezer), Central Union Mission’s Head Chef Rick immediately asked if we could come back next week, because he knew all of this food would be gone within the week. I was so happy he asked me that question, because that is exactly the type of questions I, as well as our entire network, should be asking ourselves. How can we provide consistent access to food to help our nonprofit partners have more sustainable (i.e. less funding spent on purchasing food, less food waste) practices? As the COO, it is a question I have thought a lot about since I started at FRN and the experience of recovering food gave me greater appreciation for the urgency of answering it. 

If I had not been there, this question would have likely never been passed back to me. In part because Chef Rick might have been half joking, in part because so often our nonprofit partners ask for what they need and are frequently told “no”. But it struck me that FRN has a unique opportunity to solve this question, at least for this particular partner, because they took the time to ask for what they needed. And I don’t want to be the kind of partner that doesn’t try.

Over the next year, we will be working with our network of 4,000 college students, dining service professionals, business owners, and alumni to understand what consistent access to food could look like for communities across the U.S. and how FRN could leverage our network in a different way to address this pressing need.

I am so glad I showed up, for both the food recovery and partnership beyond it.