Recap of Food Recovery Network’s September 2023 Roundtable Talk

Thank you to everyone who joined us in September for our 7th Roundtable Talk since we began hosting these conversations in July 2020. For those of you who were not able to attend,and for those of you who would like continued access to the information, below is a recap of the conversation and a link to the entire Roundtable Talk.

If you are unfamiliar with our Roundtable Talks, to understand more about what our Roundtable Talks are, why we host them, and what we cover during these biannual conversations, please read this short primer, “What are FRN’s Roundtable Talks.”

The summer Roundtable Talk journeys across two key points in time. First, we discuss progress towards our established goals (also called metrics) for the entirety of our just concluded program year, which runs from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. Second, we announce our new goals for this current program year that kicked off on July 1,2023. Dispersed throughout the telling of that journey—across analyzing our progress and announcing our new goals—we describe in detail why we were able to accomplish what we did, where there have been difficulties or if the work has been accomplished at a different pace than expected, and importantly, our key takeaways that inform how we chart our pathway for this year.

The analysis and key learnings have accumulated over more than a decade of food recovery efforts to be sure. We are experts in recovering food, and we are dogged about ending hunger forever. In particular, our feedback loop mechanism, built into the strategic framework we launched in 2020, FRN10X, allows FRN to make better decisions based on what our data is telling us, including how the locations in the U.S. afflicted with the highest rates of food insecurity are not the same locations where there is an abundance of surplus food. It is in those locations of food insecurity that our data is telling us we must work alongside communities as much as our resources will allow to literally drive the surplus food in ways that make sense for the communities

Key Takeaways from September:

Though we concluded the Roundtable Talk with our key takeaways, I think it’s important to start with them now to act as a lens with which you can see how we accomplished all that we set out to do, and where we’re forging ahead for this year.

• Cross-sector partnership is essential. As the saying goes, if you want to go fast, go solo, if you want to go farther, go together. We have achieved our success when we partner with aligned groups and individuals. Every single metric requires partnership and when we can spend more time with funders and stakeholders who want to achieve what our framework has set out, as you will see from our results, we are able to do more.

• The toll of routine community disinvestment harms all of us. That makes both human and financial capital required for community change. We talk at great length about our mapping work in this Roundtable Talk, and we will have more dedicated time specifically to the maps we are designing. Our “mapping work,” has been a 2 years long journey bringing together a variety of data-sets from the EPA, Feeding America, location mapping and other data sets such as the MIT living wage. What our data is telling us is that of the 3,144 counties (including DC), in only about 100 of these counties is the average income a living wage income. This is abominable. This means people are suffering way more than the defined poverty line would have us believe. We will persist until the 34 million people who are currently food insecure, are economically secure.

Our accomplishments July 1, 2022 - June 30, 2023:

We surpassed our goals of recovering food and recruiting new chapters (welcome new chapters! Thank you for your efforts!). These are hard tangibles that demonstrate our capacity to recover and donate surplus food to nonprofits on the frontlines helping our community members in need. That’s the first column. The second column demonstrates our work toward wider impact. Recovering food and donating that food is our bedrock work. To end hunger forever, we must understand the impact of our work on the communities. What works for them to access food and what do they need to increase the flow of food? That is where we want to help. And for the student leaders we serve, it is important to deepen authentic relationships with them as they conduct our bedrock work and show up with us in our advocacy efforts to end hunger forever.

Further, together:

When polled, the majority of people tuning in stated they had never attended a Roundtable Talk before. Perhaps reading this now, you haven’t either. I invite you all to become familiar with the knowledge, data, takeaways and celebrations we’ve summarized during our Roundtable Talks. In his book, Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck wrote, “looking back, you can usually find the moment of the birth of a new era, whereas, when it happened, it was one day hooked on to the tail of another.” That is just like the work of FRN, hooked onto the tail of our creation in 2011 - the moment we recovered 1 million pounds of food, one carload of food at a time in 2015; when we replaced our fellowship program that did not pay a living wage with permanent, full-time jobs that do pay a living wage; when we launched our audacious strategic framework and said, with this blueprint, FRN is publicly putting forward our unique contribution to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the United States. Big or small, you are needed in these efforts. Here are our current program goals and ways you can be involved so that we achieve these goals this year and come ever closer to our larger result.

Announcing FRN’s July 1, 2023-June 30, 2024 Impact Goals:

You are invited to be part of the effort:

• Start an FRN chapter in the priority states: We will bring on 20-30 new chapters this program year and our desire is to have as many chapters as possible to increase the flow of food into communities. And, with our current mapping refinement, we know that the states of California, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania have the greatest opportunity to support communities. You can start a chapter if you are a current higher ed student, alum, faculty member or if you just know someone in one of those roles you can introduce us to them.

• Monetary support ensures we can be where we need to when we need to be there: Please make a donation to FRN. All of our budgets are different and honestly, every dollar counts to allow FRN to show up for recoveries. Many of our large-scale recoveries, where we can recover large volumes of food, are not funded at all. Your donation can help us to feed more people. If a donation is not in your budget, please know we truly understand and thank you everyone for considering.

• Follow us on our social media channels to stay updated and inspired! @FoodRecovery

What are FRN's Roundtable Talks?

A brief history of FRN’s strategic framework and Roundtable Talks

In July 2020, Food Recovery Network made public our strategic framework that we called FRN10X. This framework, FRN10X, is a blueprint, our vision for how FRN plans to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the U.S.* We said three years ago the efforts necessary to change our culture of throwing food away, to recovering surplus food and donating it, would be tremendous—tremendous, but not impossible. We said three years ago no one organization alone could achieve this cultural transformation, that we have to work together to go farther. We said then that FRN’s model and data-driven approach is a critical lever in producing the desired shift towards food recovery and economic security for those experiencing hunger and food insecurity, and our results to date that I’ll discuss in more detail below, have shown that we are making progress.

And importantly, with the launch of FRN10X, we said, in order to go farther together, we wanted to keep everyone in our network updated on our progress.To ensure we kept our progress transparent and accessible to anyone who is interested, as part of the launch of FRN10X, we also started hosting our biannual Roundtable Talks. The Talks are an opportunity for FRN to discuss the progress on our yearly goals and how those yearly goals roll up to our blueprint, our strategic framework, our bigger vision: to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the U.S. No matter how familiar you are with the work of FRN, how knowledgeable you are about food insecurity or the effects on our planet due to the harm caused by wasting food, or to what level of engagement you are involved, we felt it was important to bring as many people together to update them on our progress in a space of knowledge, feedback and idea sharing.

FRN10X explained

*If you’d like to learn more about our FRN10x Framework, please visit our blogpost.

What do we cover during Roundtable Talks?

For the past three years, twice a year, we have hosted our Roundtable Talk discussions as an offering of understanding of what it takes for FRN to feed more people, faster, with our current resources; some of those resources being people, monetary contributions and data.

Summer

Our summer Roundtable Talk focuses on two aspects: a recap of our previous program year and the announcement of our goals for the current program year. Our program year concludes in late June. We restate the goals we had set at the beginning of the program year, and then discuss in detail how we accomplished those goals: what worked, where we are seeing promise, and where we might need to do things differently in the moment, to pivot, and what pivoting might look like for us. Importantly, we highlight our key learnings from doing the work, so that we can accelerate progress to feed more people, or discontinue efforts if they don’t make sense for FRN.

After we overview the previous program year, since we are also in our new program year, we launch a new set of goals for the current program year. These goals, which we call metrics, are formulated based on our key learnings, programmatic momentum, understanding what our data is telling us, and where we have connections to replicate and/or expand upon our work.

Winter

Our winter Talk focuses on our progress towards our goals during the current program year. By the time of our winter Talk, the program year is about halfway through, or, said another way, there is another half year left to achieve our goals. With a critical discernment of our work, we tell everyone our progress, and importantly, our analysis of why we are at where we are. A new program year means we are piloting new initiatives based on our data, or delving deeper into existing programs. We are also continually refining our data-sets and producing new concept papers, all to be applied with our singular focus to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the U.S.

What this means for you

After each Roundtable Talk conversation, we have a written recap that discusses our latest Talk with a link to the video conversation. All our past Roundtable Talks can be found on our website. We hope you read the recap, and listen to the recording if you have a moment or two. No matter your level of engagement, our hope is that you know without a doubt that we are inviting you to be part of this effort in any way that makes sense to you. We need your help, big or small, to make FRN’s vision a reality.

Summer Intern Dives Deeper into Fighting Food Insecurity

Current student leader at Frostburg State University, Rachael Michalski, interned for FRN this summer through the Maryland Public Service Scholars Program to support our development and fundraising efforts. Read about Rachael’s experience interning at FRN and the key learnings that she found inspiring as an FRN staff member.

This summer, I had the opportunity to intern at the Food Recovery Network national office through the Maryland Public Service Scholars Program. When I was notified that FRN had been selected as my host site, I was thrilled to get started and eager to join the food waste movement. 

Through initiatives on my college campus at Frostburg State, I had the opportunity to work with our on-campus food pantry as well as volunteer with the Maryland Food Bank, so I had some hunger-fighting experience going into this internship with FRN from the start. Being an active member of my community and serving those in need is important to me. 

This summer, I truly learned how a strong team can drive a national movement to combat a systemic issue like hunger and make real change.

Behind the scenes, I had the pleasure to get to know the Food Recovery Network National Team and learn about the jobs each person does every day to drive this national movement forward. There are many individuals that make up the FRN team and while each individual works in different roles, together the team collectively works towards a shared goal to mitigate food waste and end hunger in the U.S.

While doing my work, I learned about the intricate details that are vital to a nonprofit’s success. I learned about funders, grant language, CRM software, and many other things that allow an organization to be able to fundraise to support its mission and programs. I learned useful skills for the future of my professional career, and I also grew as a person. I am coming out of this experience with stronger communication, teamwork, and interpersonal skills. But most importantly, I learned about the passion that each Food Recovery Network team member has to help communities experiencing hunger nationwide. 

Beyond working behind the scenes, this summer internship experience also provided me with an opportunity to work directly on the front line where I participated in a food recovery at the Gaylord Hotel in Washington D.C. I was thrilled to have participated in what I would call a successful food recovery, where 38 trays of food and a box of fruit that would have otherwise been wasted were recovered and donated to the Central Union Mission in Washington D.C. to feed individuals facing hunger in the city. That was a really great experience! 

Food Recovery Network works tirelessly to serve communities all across the United States with gratitude and grace. This team and their work is incredible and I was honored to be a part of it this summer! 

At the end of my internship, the FRN team offered me a part-time position to continue working on development initiatives as well as dive into the programming side of the organization. In my continuing work, I will be working to create a nationwide map that will show local food recovery locations, in order to continue to prevent waste. I am excited to continue this impactful journey!

FRN Chapter Leader Shares Highlights from the 2023 ReFED Summit

Arjun Nair is the President of FRN’s student-led chapter at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. In May, Arjun attended ReFED’s annual Food Waste Solutions Summit, an event that convenes representatives from the public and private sectors to discuss solutions to food loss and food waste in the United States. Read about Arjun’s experience attending this in-person event and the key learnings that he found inspiring as an FRN chapter leader.

In May, I had the incredible opportunity to attend the ReFED 2023 Food Waste Solutions Summit in St. Louis. This annual summit brings together the top leaders and pioneers in the food waste space to spark collaboration and innovation, and it was an amazing experience to be a part of this discussion. For three days, I was flooded with information and inspiration about ways that we are combating food waste around the globe, and what struck me most was the endless diversity in how we are all tackling food waste. 

Photo credit: Jessica Yurinko

Arjun Nair speaking during The Future is Now: The Power of Indomitable Youth to Spark Action panel.

As a speaker on The Future is Now: The Power of Indomitable Youth to Spark Action panel, I had the opportunity to share the Food Recovery Network’s mission and our unique stance as a college-student-driven movement. I also learned about the other panelists’ inspiring efforts, like Ben Collier’s work to rescue surplus food from farms through The Farmlink Project, and Kenneth L. Moss Jr.’s mission to collect and compost food scraps from his neighborhood through the Baltimore Compost Collective. While we all have a niche focus, all of these solutions are equally prosperous and important to mitigate food waste along the supply chain.

Photo credit: Jessica Yurinko

Left to right: Moderator, Marvin Hayes, Baltimore Compost Collective; Arjun Nair, FRN Student Leader; Mia Zavalij, co-founder of FRN; Kenneth Moss Jr, Baltimore Compost; Ben Collier, The Farmlink Project

At each event, the room was flooded with passionate words from diverse voices, each sharing their approaches to combating food loss and waste, the challenges they face through their work, and the future directions their efforts may take as the landscape for food waste reduction continues to evolve.

“Overall, this conference opened my eyes to the ocean which is the food waste prevention space, and where our little boat fits into that grand picture. The individuals I met and the organizations I learned about during this conference added new dimensions to how I view FRN’s food recovery efforts, and I want to take the time to highlight their incredible stories.”

— Arjun Nair

Ivan Jaminez

Program manager, hole food rescue

Ivan Jaminez is the Program Manager of Hole Food Rescue located in Teton County, Wyoming, an area where the average per capita income is $318,297 dollars but the median income is only $66,296. As an immigrant from Puerto Rico, he is a part of the substantial immigrant population located in this area, which is disproportionately at risk of food insecurity. His talk at the ReFED Summit focused not on how organizations can increase the number of pounds they recover but rather on how to strengthen their ties with the community. He emphasized how food waste organizations should strive to know the culture and identity of their client populations, positioning themselves as community members rather than an “outside savior.”

These efforts have helped increase Hole Food Rescue’s reach and ties to the community, making food waste and redistribution efforts exponentially more fruitful. As an FRN chapter leader, I feel this advice can and should be applied by all FRN chapters to strengthen the relationships they hold with the communities they serve.

Dr. sara elnakib

department of family and community health sciences chair, rutgers university

Dr. Sara Elnakib is the Department of Family and Community Health Sciences Chair at Rutgers University, and her team visits local K-12 schools to promote child health equity and stewardship in food waste. During her talk, Dr. Elnakib shared a story that really moved me. During her school visits, her team provides a visible demonstration of food waste by lining up the cartons of milk that go to waste at school every day on tables in the cafeteria. She described the shocked looks on children’s faces when they can actually see how much milk their schools toss daily, and how these talks have inspired change by raising awareness among students. Hearing about her creative efforts to make something serious like food waste easier for kids to understand and digest was amazing. Often, younger people are not included in conversations about food waste and recovery/prevention, something that FRN strives to change by working with college students. Dr. Elnakib’s discussion on the importance of starting these educational efforts early resonated strongly with me because of the connection to FRN’s mission.

bruce taylor

President, enviro-stewards

Bruce Taylor is the president of Enviro-Stewards, a consulting company that helps other companies reduce carbon emissions and food waste. One of the many stories he shared was about visiting a cheese packaging company, where he noticed a dysfunctional conveyer belt that dropped several blocks of cheese onto the floor each day. After weighing what seemed like a  minuscule amount of cheese that fell off the belt, Enviro-Stewards calculated that the company was losing $70,000 per year - money that could otherwise be used towards efforts such as food waste prevention. I was shocked to learn how these small, seemingly inconsequential problems can accumulate to become something far greater. Taylor’s story offered a reminder that every step of the food production process should be analyzed for improvement to reduce food waste, regardless of how long-standing or mundane it is. Even seemingly small amounts of food loss add up!

Left to right: FRN Student Leader, Riya Chadha; Director of Development at FRN, Cassie Olovsson, FRN Student Leader, Arjun Nair

All of these speakers talked about different ideas and problems, yet their respective mission and motivations overlap with each other and that of FRN. Integrating with the communities we serve, reaching out to youth, and ensuring efficient processes are all important, realistic targets that any FRN chapter can pursue. In general, it can be easy to fall into the linear backbone of food recovery and delivery. However, the power of students being in interdisciplinary environments surrounded by collaborative efforts gives FRN’s network a unique opportunity for diverse outreach and impact. 

This summit presented the opportunity to discuss all of the amazing work being done in the food space and revealed to me the variety of impactful approaches that exist to prevent food loss and waste. At every turn, people expressed their desire to interact with the younger generation, and FRN is perfectly positioned to be a vehicle and leader for these efforts. FRN students have the capacity for incredible, multi-faceted change, and this conference served as a reminder of the limitless ways we can improve and collaborate to fight food waste and improve our local communities. 

Remember: your small action results in big gains

It’s been four months since the momentum of the Super Bowl helped bring the work of Food Recovery Network into the homes of millions of people thanks to a live CNN interview, CNN news article, and other media coverage*. 

FRN’s message is clear and simple: 

1) there are 26 million tons of food that goes to waste each year at the farm and institutional level that could instead go into communities facing food insecurity; 

2) there are 34 million people right now who are unnecessarily facing food insecurity who desperately need that food; 

3) we all have the power to change our collective action from food waste to food recovery today.

I wanted to bring this moment back for all of us, after all of the excitement of seeing FRN so prominently displayed on our TV screens and in the news media, to remind us of the invitation I extended to everyone: we all have the power to ensure perfectly good surplus food is donated to those who need it.

Remembrance of things past: We’re in this to win it!

My invitation included a few ideas of what you can do to immediately begin to normalize food recovery. Here’s a recap:

• Get refreshed on FRN’s Food Recovery Verified Program that supports companies and  events in creating a recovery plan for their surplus food. Bonus: bookmark the page and send it to everyone you know. I’m not kidding. Send it to everyone because there’s still a lot of confusion about who can recover food and what food can be recovered, and FRN is literally an expert in clearing up any confusion.

• If your company hosts a conference of any size, make sure there is a recovery plan for any surplus food from the event. You can start by getting in touch with the event coordinators. If the event coordinators were not planning on recovering surplus food, no problem - just introduce them to us and we’ll talk to them about how they can do that. Bonus: the event coordinators might be touched that you were interested in what they’re doing on their end of the company. Building goodwill among colleagues supports a thriving company. I study this stuff and I’m happy to talk with you about it, and I wrote about it here and here for starters!

• If your company has a corporate cafeteria, the same approach applies. Who’s the dining manager? Chances are, we have a relationship with the national dining provider already, so we’re halfway through the door. Find out who your dining manager is, ask them if they have a food recovery plan in place, and if not, introduce them to us. Bonus: have you ever talked to the dining manager of your corporate cafeteria? They and their staff take a lot of pride in making the food that’s available for you and your colleagues. I know, because I’ve spoken with many dining providers over the years and we survey them, too! The last thing they and their staff want to do is throw away the food that goes unsold, but sometimes they don’t know that there is something else they can do with the food.

• Donating to FRN supports our ability to mobilize across the US and increase access to food in communities where it’s most needed. I want to also emphasize that due to systematic disinvestment in certain communities, increasing the flow of food is not only essential, but so is being authentically partnered in these communities. This also means that we must often address the underlying needs of the community before we can really see forward momentum in the flow of food. We talk about this more in our latest public Roundtable Talk. Bonus: if it’s in your budget to become a monthly sustaining donor to FRN, your support helps us stabilize financially and have a good sense of the consistent income we have coming in each month. My main role as FRN’s Executive Director is to fundraise for FRN so that we have the funding necessary to do our basic work. This doesn’t even include what it means for us to expand our work, which is also so desperately needed.

Turning Nos into Yeses: You got this!

I have two pieces of advice for you if this is your first time engaging in conversations around food recovery. First, you can do it! I know you can and I believe in you! Second, don’t take no for an answer. At FRN, we hear no a lot from folks. Many times people will tell us no, the food can’t be donated, but that is simply not true! The Food Donation Improvement Act is just one federal protection in place that makes donating food legal and easy. We know that people don’t say no because they love to throw food away. When you have conversations with event coordinators, catering teams, or dining managers about recovering food, keep trying your best, try to find out why they might be concerned, and don’t hesitate to put them in touch with us to talk more. We’ve heard all of the reasons people say no hundreds of times before and we have solutions for almost any reason, including:

• They truly believe it’s not safe or legal to donate food;

• They are unsure of who would be liable for the food once it leaves their facility;

• They are not even sure if they are “allowed” to do something else with surplus food besides what they’ve always done and been approved to do, aka throw it away;

• They have their system down pat for how they run their back of house and it’s very difficult to:

  • Add a step to the process (read: recover food instead of throw it away);

  • Disrupt a very tight schedule of prepping from one meal to the next, or closing down the house for the night. They might fear that a recovery plan will extend their timing and screw up their process;

  • Try something new: who will help get it started, who will train the staff, and what if it doesn’t run smoothly right away?

We’ve been supporting food recoveries for over a decade and we’re here to help turn nos into yeses. After all, if we took a no at face value, we would not have been able to recover more than 12 million pounds of food across the US. Heck, we wouldn't have even started in the first place because when the co-founders of FRN first approached their dining manager about their idea for food recovery, her answer was no. And when they approached her again, her answer was…still no. We have to keep trying because we know that there is no reason we should be tossing out perfectly good food.

Thank you for RSVPing yes to our invitation to do the right thing with surplus food, support our communities, and help our environment.

PS. *my opening sentence, “It’s been four months since…” immediately brought to my mind the song “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Prince…how about you?