Location: 412 Food Rescue’s Good Food Project located inside the Food & Energy Hub in Millvale
Featured guests: 412 Food Rescue’s Lead Dispatch Coordinator Logan Laizure and Assistant Kitchen Manager Alexa Waugh
3 things that surprised me:
1. Logan explained that nearly 40% of food produced in the U.S. is wasted. 412 Food Rescue’s mission is to capture that food and deliver it to organizations and folks who can use it. As a dispatch coordinator, Logan is something of a local food matchmaker. Someone might call him with 1,000 pounds of avocados and he has to figure out how to get them and where to send them. The organization doesn’t have a lot of storage so it has to find a destination for the food quickly.
2. Alexa explained that every day in the Good Food Project kitchen is like an episode of “Chopped.” They’ll get a range of ingredients from grocery stores, distributors and restaurants and come up with creative and tasty ways to transform those ingredients into balanced meals that can be delivered to people in need.
3. 412 Food Rescue operates with the help of many, many volunteers, some of whom were working in the kitchen with Alexa as we toured the space. It also relies on thousands of volunteers who have downloaded the 412 Food Rescue app so that they can go out, rescue food and deliver it to a place where it will be put to use.
One thing that didn’t make the final cut: Since 412 Food Rescue was founded in 2015 it has rescued over 31 million pounds of food and provided over 26 million meals to folks in Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Want more Yinzer Backstage Pass? Check out our visit to Penn Mac in The Strip where we found out what they keep in the basement.
