Filling the basket
By Mike Mitchelson

Second Harvest Heartland, the largest food bank in the upper Midwest, supplies about 60 non-profit food shelves in the metro area, including domestic abuse shelters, after-school programs and HIV/AIDS programs. The non-profit organization also supplies eligible individuals—mother’s with children or senior citizens—with food, and sends boxes of food to out state families in need.

In recent years, Second Harvest is trying to take on the problem of food waste. Kate Mudge has been, for almost a year, the food rescue program’s (also known as Twelve Baskets) manager. She was a baker at Turtle Bread Company, the Wedge Co-op and Black Forest Inn, among others. “And I know from being a baker, we throw out a lot of stuff,” she said. “I wanted to leave the restaurant world and do something else. I stumbled on this job, and it’s exactly what I want to do.”

Just how much waste does a restaurant produce? Or, specifically, how much food waste does it produce that really doesn’t need to end up in the dumpster?

The national program, America’s Second Harvest, trumpets a disturbing statistic: Humans toss out about 25 percent of their food, and restaurants play a large role. “If we can recapture 1 to 2 percent, that’s huge,” Mudge said. The Twin Cities’ food rescue program collected about two million pounds of food in 2005.

Hennepin and Ramsey counties are starting organic recycling programs, although Hennepin is far ahead in encouraging donations, Mudge said. Ramsey is improving, but as yet only has its health inspectors, while on their rounds, recommend to businesses to donate extra food to Second Harvest/Twelve Baskets. Businesses can earn tax breaks for donating their extra or leftover usable food.

There is competition for this food, however. “Hog farmers are our major competitors,” she said. “Farmers will pay for the food, like produce.” Many restaurants, for a variety of reasons, don’t want to pay a worker to separate out good food—it’s easier to collect it and sell it to the farmer for feed.

Twelve Baskets simplifies the process by supplying its donors with tins and lids to package the food. They also accept any prepared food that never made it out to the buffet line or a diner’s table.

Much of the food to the program comes from larger companies, such as Super Target and SYSCO, and large-scale foodservice operations such as Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools. At Super Target, they might pick up 100 to 200 pounds of meat per visit. “They also give us produce, dry goods and dented cans (they can’t place on the shelf).”

Second Harvest has five refrigerated trucks for Twelve Baskets that run a daily pickup route. They hit the road at 7 a.m., and in the afternoon deliver the food to the various agencies. The drivers are certified food handlers, and donors are screened to ensure kitchens are up to code.

“We do not store food for the rescue program,” Mudge said. The agencies “shop off the truck” for what they need. Any leftovers, given their perishable nature, are either placed in the trash or given to a feed lot.


Restaurant donations

Among Mudge’s goals are to increase the donations from restaurants. To encourage donors, Mudge notes the Federal Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, which America’s Second Harvest lobbied strongly for and President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1996, which protects donors from lawsuits. “The minute the food leaves their door, they’re not liable for it,” Mudge said.

The program has had success with restaurants and caterers; regular donations come from Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurants, D’Amico Catering, Famous Dave’s, Buffets Inc. (Old Country Buffet) and Honey Baked Ham stores. Independent restaurants don’t participate as much, Mudge said. “For them to rack up about 40 pounds of food (to make a pick up worthwhile) would require freezer space,” she said. Mudge is searching for a way to encourage restaurants, particularly those in close proximity to each other, to coordinate their efforts.

The food the Olive Garden in Roseville, Minn., donates is food that, while still high quality, can’t be re-heated for guests, said the restaurant’s culinary manager, Clayton Midboe. “Like cooked lasagna,” he said. “We used to throw it away at the end of the night. (Now) we freeze it at the end of the night, re-bag it, label date it, and put it in storage tubs, and (Twelve Baskets) picks it up each week. Also our meatballs and soups that have pasta, because those can’t be used. It’s still good quality stuff, but we can’t expect our guests to pay for reheated food.”

Midboe estimates his restaurant donates about 40 pounds of food per week, which might also include individual entrees a server might accidentally ring up. “If we aren’t able to reuse it on another ticket within a couple minutes, then we put it in a container and put it in the freezer,” he said. Donated items also include any obsolete menu items and spices, including the obsolete plates those dishes were served on.

Items are logged, and the restaurant gets a tax break through Second Harvest that averages out to be about $200 a month per Olive Garden restaurant, Midboe said. “That’s better than (the food) going in the garbage, and it benefits someone else.” Olive Garden restaurants across the country participating in Second Harvest food rescue programs donated more that two million pounds of food in 2005, according to a company newsletter.

Honey Baked Ham stores are a retail and catering business, and sells family meals and sandwiches for in-store dining. Their core product is, as one might guess, the Honey Baked Ham. Donations include extra ham meat—sometimes a whole ham—and hambones. “There’s still plenty of meat on the bones for sandwiches,” said Store Manager Mark Ballou. “During the summer, when we prep our ham for sandwiches, we have so many ham bones we can’t possibly sell them, so we just strictly donate them.” In the winter, however, it’s a different story. Customers quickly buy up the bones to make soups.

Still, even with the seasonal fluctuations, Ballou estimates the store donates about 50 pounds of meat and product per week. The store also gets a tidy tax break, but “it’s for a great cause, too,” he said.

A side effect of the program’s success is that some large donors became smaller ones—companies used the program as an auditing service, and have changed their food ordering patterns. “They start asking their chefs why they have extra food,” she said. Large-scale operations like Super Target build in a certain amount of waste into their planning, therefore their donations are steady. “The tax benefits can really add up, and they’re seeing it,” Mudge said.

The program receives some very desirable donations, including top sirloin, lobster, crab and fresh produce. “And a farmer from a U-Pick place might call and say they’ve got a plot of strawberries that, if we come out and pick them, we can have them.”

Twelve Baskets also will park Second Harvest semi trucks at food shows and festivals to collect any unused food. Mudge continues to study other food rescue programs across the nation, particularly those in urban areas, such as New York City’s successful program. The New York program sends volunteers on foot downtown, for example, to retrieve donations from kitchens where loading dock access is difficult. “There are so many different ways this program can go,” she said.

For more information on Second Harvest Heartland and the Twelve Baskets food rescue program, visit www.2harvest.org.