An Overview Of Our Solution
412 Food Rescue is combatting climate change by shifting behaviors about food that, for whatever reason is not sellable, but is still perfectly edible for consumption. Our transformative partnerships with food retailers, nonprofit agencies and volunteer drivers have created a movement - a movement of over 3.8 million pounds of food in 3 years to ensure that food is reaching people who need it the most where they live, work and learn. Our scalable solution combines logistics innovation, technology and unprecedented social engagement to measurably impact food security and access.
- Population Impacted: 291,920 food insecure people
- Continent: North America
Last name
Organization type
Context Analysis
40% of our food supply is wasted each year, ending up in landfills. This waste creates an immense strain on our human and natural resources - using 10% of our energy, 50% of our land and 80% of all fresh water consumed in the U.S. and creating devastating effects on our environment. At the same time, 1 in 7 people experience food insecurity - uncertain of whether they have enough food or not knowing when they will eat again. Conventional hunger interventions view it as a binary problem - having food and not having food. However, food insecurity has multiple dimensions. 412 Food Rescue bridges the disconnect between food waste and hunger with an audacious logistics solution that combines technology with civic engagement to ensure perfectly viable surplus food - most of which is fresh, nutrient-dense healthy produce - is reaching people in need where they live, work and learn, rather than ending up in landfills.
Describe the technical solution you wanted the target audience to adopt
Each and every day, 412 Food Rescue recovers surplus food from a broad cross section of entities - retailers, wholesale distributors, learning institutions, restaurants, events/attractions and more. Through civic engagement, we mobilize our volunteer network of 4,000 drivers - Food Rescue Heroes - to transport food from these donors to our nonprofit partners that serve people in poverty. This model encourages food suppliers to adopt new practices - donating their surplus food through our collaborative efforts. Technology and civic response are essential to achieving success throughout our work. Not only are we relying on the public to become actively engaged in food recovery, but doing so through our mobile app - Food Rescue Hero. Since we introduced our technology, more than 4,000 people have downloaded, registered and responded to our call - receiving push notifications of available food and transporting it to our nonprofit partners so that they can feed people in need.
Type of intervention
Describe your behavioral intervention
412 Food Rescue pursues multiple behavioral interventions through our work to recover surplus food from food retailers to nonprofit partners, as well as through our interaction with the public and our growing network of volunteers. We know that no one wants to waste food. Our mission and overarching goal attempts to disrupt choice architecture by understanding the environmental implications of food waste and changing perceptions of its effectiveness - what it looks like, whether it can be consumed, who can transport it and how it can alleviate hunger. It is often most challenging to change these behaviors among food retailers and the public that we seek to engage to transport food. By demonstrating and sharing the impact of our work, we continue to grow our community of more than 490 food donors, 575 nonprofit partners and 4,000 volunteers.
We also know that people inherently want to do good. We see this each and every day when individuals respond to our call for volunteer drivers to move food. More 4,000 people have demonstrated their desire to help other and to change the norm by joining a community of Food Rescue Heroes. In 3 years, they have completed 20,000 calls for help and their response rate stands at 99% affirming our belief that they want to be part of the solution.
As needed, please explain the type of intervention in more detail
At our core, 412 Food Rescue intersects with emotional appeals. We often hear from our nonprofit partners how we have impacted hunger, volunteers who tell us that they couldn’t imagine the food they rescued would have been tossed in the garbage rather than feeding hungry families, mothers share how we have helped them to feed their children and kids thank us for filling their bellies. Not only have we created a community of Food Rescue Heroes, but all of these people have become part of a movement. We appeal to the emotions of others by sharing these stories each and every day through photographs, interviews, videos and more across all of our social networks and in news features that highlight the work of 412 Food Rescue.
Describe your implementation
In recent years, food waste has become a hot topic widely discussed throughout the world. The issue has been the impetus for the formation of agencies, the creation of documentaries, the reason for national and international convenings, addressed in legislation and more. The EPA frequently reports on the impact that food waste has on our environment. The USDA continues to address food waste by incorporating reduction efforts in the US Farm Bill in pursuit of their goal to reduce food waste by 50% before 2030.
412 Food Rescue set out to tackle this at the local level when it was evident that perfectly good food was being discarded. Knowing that this food could support agencies serving people struggling with food insecurity we began by connecting with the most obvious food waste sources in our community - food retailers. Developing a trusted and effective means to recover surplus food and transport it organizations that can use it to serve people in poverty has exploded in the past 3 years.
Our technology - a key factor to our success - has effectively increased our recovery velocity. In our first 21 months of growth, we recovered 1 million pounds. After launching our mobile app - Food Rescue Hero - it took 9 months to reach 2 million and 6 months to reach 3 million. In only three years we have create a food distribution network double the size of a traditional food bank network. Through research that not only are we reaching people, but we are impacting hunger. Our network continues to expand - amassing new food donors, nonprofit partners and funders to advance our mission. Every challenge that we are faced with has been met with determination - securing food donations from retailers, implementing new partner distribution sites, engaging the public to volunteer, obtaining the necessary resources to achieve our goals - to find a way in which we can prevent perfectly good food from entering the waste stream to reach and impact people experiencing food insecurity.
External connections
412 Food Rescue has created a community of stakeholders committed to advancing our mission of reducing food waste and fighting hunger. Each plays an instrumental role in our ability to redirect perfectly good surplus food from landfills to people in poverty. Food donor partners have pledged their support through ongoing and increasing food donations understanding our ability to truly impact hunger through collaboration. In our region, these partnerships include such retailers as Gordon Food Service, Sysco, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Paragon, Consumer Fresh Produce, Giant Eagle and more.
In order to effectively impact hunger, we rely on alliances with nonprofit agencies to ensure food reaches people experiencing food insecurity. Some traditional hunger relief organizations like The Salvation Army, Meals on Wheels and more, as well as unconventional partnerships with public housing sites to reach people where they live and mitigate barriers to access.
Our volunteers - 4,000 strong - enable us to move this food preventing it from entering the landfills and reaching people who need it. Finally, our funders - regional foundations, corporations and individuals, have all provided us with the financial resources to implement our model and grow it to expand throughout Southwestern PA.
Who adopted the desired behaviors and to what degree?
The most challenging behavior change that we have had to initiate and continue to influence is that among food retailers/suppliers. We have had to shift their beliefs that this food is no good or not consumable, or that donating it creates a liability for their business, or that it is too difficult to coordinate the donation, let alone that it creates devastating long-term results on our environment. Changing their mindset and gaining their trust in 412 Food Rescue to redirect their surplus food and direct it to people who can truly benefit from it has been the biggest hurdle. One of our retail partners in which this was most evident is Giant Eagle - a grocery chain in Southwestern PA. Since initiating a partnership with them in late 2015, we have now expanded to 50 of their corporate stores in a six-county area and have cumulatively recovered over 550,000 pounds of food. They will be a key partner as we look to expand in Cleveland later this year - their biggest market.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
Since launching in 2015, 412 Food Rescue has recovered and redirected 3.9 million pounds of perfectly good food - equivalent to 3.2 million meals and a retail value of $9,630,324. We record tonnage recovered from our food donor partners to track what is distributed to nonprofits and to determine the environmental impact of their donation.
If it were not for our intervention, this food would’ve been directed to a landfill where it would emit over 2 million pounds of CO2 - a harmful greenhouse gas. Applying EPA calculations for greenhouse gas equivalencies, diverting this food to people for consumption is similar to removing 206 passenger vehicles from the roadways for one year or preserving 7.8 acres of U.S. forests from being converted to cropland.
What were some of the resulting co-benefits?
In addition to the aforementioned environmental benefits realized through our work at 412 Food Rescue, we have also supported 575 nonprofit agencies with much-needed resources. More than half, 65%, of all food that we have redistributed has aided organizations not served by food banks so that they can assist people in poverty. We create new food access networks that go beyond traditional food pantries. In Pittsburgh, this network ensures that over 100,000 more people in poverty are within a 15-minute walk of food.
These partnerships have been transformative - ending hunger in whole communities. Our work with the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh has ended calls for emergency food since we began partnering three years ago. We also know through research conducted by the University of Pittsburgh applying USDA metrics for food security, we have improved food security among 88% of those whom we serve.
Sustainability
As long as trends and practices remain unchanged in the retail food sector, there will continue to be “food waste” and demand for an effective food recovery solution like 412 Food Rescue. In order to achieve economic sustainability, this model requires an investment by multiple stakeholders. Food retailers and similar suppliers must commit to donating their surplus foods; nonprofits need to accept donations and utilize them to serve people in need; the public must be actively involved in the food rescue process in order to reduce organizational overhead; and finally, we rely on the support of our donors, specifically the foundation, business community and individuals, to enable us to carry out and refine our model and technology.
Return on investment
It is difficult to calculate a return on investment as 412 Food Rescue continues to experience tremendous growth increasing in both tonnage and reach. In terms of quantifying our impact by cost, we have set out to recover and redirect 3 million pounds of food in 2018. If achieved, it will cost roughly $0.20 per pound to place and move. The total cost to redistribute this food - an estimated $600,000 - in addition to the $7.5 million retail value of the product that is diverted from the landfill resulting in a $6.9 million savings. The challenge we still continue to tackle is translating the dollar-for-dollar value as it impacts hunger knowing that we have improved food security by 88% of those whom we serve.
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
In the coming months, 412 Food Rescue plans to scale in three cities - San Francisco, Philadelphia and Cleveland. In order to achieve this goal, we must first identify three key stakeholders - a nonprofit agency to lead the effort, a food retailer committed to donating surplus food and a funder to support the pilot project. From there we will employ the use of our technology to mobilize the community and support food recovery efforts on a large scale in each of these markets.
While food recovery has been launched in other markets, no model or agency has been as successful as 412 Food Rescue. We are able to track tonnage, affirming the amounts and types of food that is being recovered and distributed, report impact and demonstrate the effectiveness of our model as it improves food security.