Community Plates has hit upon a simple formula: Take food from those who have too much and give it to those who need it. At one end of town, a grocery store is discarding food that is about to expire or otherwise can’t be sold. Meanwhile, at the other end, hungry people wait in a line at a local food pantry. It is a scenario that plays out every day across the country as well as in the state of Connecticut. According to Feeding America, about 50 million people in the United States are food insecure, meaning that they don’t have access to a sufficient quantity of affordable and nutritious food. Approximately 500,000 of those who are food insecure live in Connecticut. Such a situation in this country does not make any sense, according to Community Plates, the Fairfield County-based, technology-fueled, directtransfer food rescue organization. It’s not a matter of there not being enough food like in some parts of the world; in the U.S., it comes down to logistics— food is not being distributed properly. People are starving while Americans throw away nearly 40 percent of our collective food supply each year. FIGHTING FOOD INSECURITY Community Plates founders Kevin Mullins and Jeff Schacher have a solution to this problem: community generosity fueled by technology. As the CEO of the cloud-based soft ware program WhenToManage, which helps restaurant owners manage labor, inventory and reporting, Schacher was intimately aware of how much waste restaurants produce every week. He started asking about grocery stores. What did they do with products they don’t sell? Th e answer—they oft en throw it away. “Th ey’re in the business of making money,” says Schacher. “Th ey don’t like to throw away food but it can’t cost them money [to get rid of it.]” As a specialist in simplifying complicated processes, Schacher thought he could troubleshoot the problem. If the process of donation was easier and cheaper, he figured people would be willing to pitch in. He was right. Restaurants and grocery stores loved the idea of donating unused food to local food pantries and soup kitchens. “We knew the food was here and it needed to go there. We asked, ‘How do we do that?’” says Schacher. “It started as an experiment. I wondered if volunteers would get in their car and drive food down the street.” Community Plates harnesses the power of technology to schedule “food rescues.” Volunteers use their own vehicles and their own time to pick up food from grocery stores and deliver it to food pantries. It’s a quick process, sometimes taking as little as 20 minutes out of the volunteer’s day. “People sign up for the app. They can see what live food rescue opportunities [there] are and they self-schedule so there’s no middle man,” says Mullins. Community Plates operates under what Mullins calls “three distinctives.” They are a volunteer-driven, direct-transfer and technology- fueled service. All lend to the organization’s ability to “do good for little money.” “Food rescue, we didn’t invent that. People have been doing that. What’s key about our platform is that we’re volunteer driven,” says Mullins. “We go from Point A to Point B. We don’t take the product anywhere to stock it. The value of food gets directly where it needs to go.” The organization is able to rescue meals for approximately eight cents per meal. They can rescue a million pounds of food for the same amount of energy resources as it would take to rescue a thousand pounds of food. Community Plates has saved 4.9 million meals (or $6 million) since its launch in 2011. The majority of that has been rescued in Fairfield County, its first site. There are currently four other Community Plates sites around the country: in New Haven County; Albuquerque, N.M.; Columbus, Ohio; and New Orleans. In Fairfield County, the organization works with more than 30 donors and supports 32 soup kitchens and food pantries. FOOD RESCUE On a rainy Thursday in September, Tom Hauser, the site director for Fairfield County, pulls up behind Mrs. Green’s Natural Market in New Canaan for a donation pickup. The baskets and bags that are loaded into the back of Hauser’s SUV contain a variety of food items including yogurt, coconut milk, lettuce, juice, tofu and zucchini. It takes only a couple of minutes for Mrs. Green’s employees to carry the food up the back steps of the store and into the car. From there, Hauser, who started with the organization as a food runner and moved into his position as site director last year, whisks the delivery off to the Wilson Pantry in Stamford. Located in the basement of a church, the Wilson pantry feeds about 200 people weekly. That number increases to between 300 and 400 during the winter months. Pantry director Joyce Gumbus, who lovingly goes by the name Miss Joyce, says she relies on Community Plates deliveries for about 25 percent of the food they provide for those in need. The other 75 percent comes from the local food bank. The pantry receives a Community Plates delivery once a week. Serena Hunt, a retail dietician-nutritionist at Mrs. Green’s, is the one who reached out to Community Plates because she felt passionately that the store’s organic produce could help those who are food insecure get the nutrition they need. “We are doing this because our business truly revolves around ‘good’ practices,” says Hunt. “Sharing our high-quality, nutritious food with those in need not only makes us feel good about ourselves, but also helps us impart good to our local community. Mrs. Green’s has a nutritionist on staff mainly because the business model is so concerned with providing free services in the community that promote health. What better way to spread this message than by donating highquality food to those who otherwise would not have been able to afford it?” Mrs. Green’s, like all grocery stores, has a system for discarding food. Hunt explains that the newly opened New Canaan store reviews each department daily to check quality and sell-by dates, removing product as needed. Perishable items that have been frozen are donated, and if they haven’t been frozen, they are donated for use by the sell-by date. Bakery products can be donated one day past the sell-by date. “All products must be in the original packaging with seal intact, marked with a sell-by date and the appropriate labels,” says Hunt. “We do not donate any product that does not contain proper labeling.” Once items are selected for donation, the store holds them in a refrigerator or freezer until pickup. “We donate a variety of foods, a lot of organic produce, some dairy including grass-fed, local and organic varieties, eggs, canned goods, bakery items and meat, to name a few,” says Hunt. “Community Plates is wonderful because they accept a variety of food items.” The food pantries and soup kitchens rely heavily on Community Plates because they provide food options not typically received from donors, such as fresh produce and meat. Pat Cage of the Person-to-Person pantries in Darien and Norwalk says they have always been committed to supplying clients with fresh produce and meat, but donations were irregular and usually consisted of onions, potatoes and frozen chicken. Since partnering with Community Plates, Person-to-Person receives a variety of vegetables including squash, zucchini, lettuce, strawberries and apples, as well as fresh bread and red meat. While they don’t receive all of those items in every delivery, donations are much more regular. Cage says it’s been a “tremendous partnership” that has made a difference to the clients. Still, with every delivery the food pantries have to sort through donations for food that has gone bad. The first thing Miss Joyce does with the Mrs. Green’s delivery is check expiration dates. “We throw away about 30 percent of what they bring us,” says Cage. “Sometimes, that’s because of one bad apple or one squishy potato in the bag. Sometimes, it’s a result of mishandling in the exchange.” The food pantries never know exactly what they’re going to receive in a donation. That occasionally results in receiving a lot of one product and none of another, but Mullins says that doesn’t happen as often as you’d expect. Most of the deliveries include a good mix of products. “Food rescue is not a science, it’s an adventure,” he says. “Partner agencies don’t have an expectation of food they will receive, but some really good patterns tend to emerge. [They learn] these are the types of foods we receive from these donors. If you did a run 10 times, there might be a flux of 20 percent in either direction, but not a 50 percent flux. Generally, they’re similar types of runs. The waste [grocery stores and restaurants] generate is similar.” If partner agencies report that they are receiving too much food or can’t distribute it quickly enough before it expires, Mullins says the routes are adjusted “on the fly.” Sometimes that means splitting a run between two dropoff locations, or rerouting a run to another facility that needs a larger donation. Person-to-Person’s Norwalk facility, for instance, receives between four and five Community Plates donations per week, and serves between 725 and 750 families per month. In Darien, which serves about 250 families per month, two or three donations are received per week. Cage says the organization is really good about offering new runs to the facilities when a new donor joins the system. GROWTH AND ENGAGEMENT Community Plates is constantly adding donors and partnering agencies to its roster in Fairfield County. Now that the organization has been up and running for three years, it’s typically agencies who reach out and say they want to get involved. But for newer sites like the one in New Orleans, which was opened in early September, the organization reaches out to food pantries and soup kitchens that are already doing a good job of battling food insecurity. Since the organization’s work relies so heavily on volunteers and community involvement, forcing the system on a locale that doesn’t want it, doesn’t work. The community has to demonstrate a desire to start a Community Plates program before a site launches. That was the case for New Orleans, and Mullins believes the site will be successful because of the town’s reputation as a foodie destination and the sense of neighbor helping neighbor that is pervasive there. Mullins and Schacher are determined to service the entire state of Connecticut by the end of 2015. At this point, the Fairfield County and New Haven County sites cover the individual territories and even expand to outlying communities like Waterbury. They are in “serious conversations” with the Hartford community. They see Community Plates as a national organization, and have since the very beginning. They hope to establish sites in all 50 states eventually. “We want to have an impact on the 50 million food insecure in the country,” says Mullins. “We hope to expand to all major U.S. cities and second-tier cities.” The founders are thinking big. They know the potential impact is huge and that there are excited volunteers in every community. Now they are working on refining the process. “We really want to be more focused on making [the app] engaging,” says Mullins. “We want to make it easy for you to post your run to Twitter and Facebook. We want to set up a reward fund, similar to Foursquare… and forums so people can connect. You’re not doing it with other people but you’re part of a community. Some people might call these bells and whistles, but we think those are focused on long-term engagement.” For more information on Community Plates and to get involved, visit communityplates.org.