Innovator Panel

The second half of the session features a Food Waste Innovator Panel.  Panelists and their innovations include:

Ann Yang, MISFIT Juicery: Ann Yang and her partner Phil Wong launched MISFIT Juicery in Washington, D.C. in 2015, while undergraduates at Georgetown University. MISFIT Juicery uses cosmetically imperfect “ugly fruits and vegetables” and post production scraps from fruit and vegetable processors to make cold-pressed juices. “Twenty billion pounds of fresh, yet imperfect, produce goes unsold or unharvested every year,” notes Yang. “We learned about agricultural waste at Georgetown — our first experiment was with four crates of ugly peaches and a blender I borrowed from a woman I babysat for.”

 Misfit Juicery is building a supply chain that gives market value to produce that otherwise wouldn’t make it to market. “We have been able to scale this type of innovation,” adds Yang. “Our vision is to become the country’s largest natural food company making value-added products from rescued food.” MISFIT Juicery operates in Washington, D.C. and New York City, and was selected to participate in the Chobani food incubator program, which includes a $25,000 grant (equity-free capital), one-on-one time with Chobani team members and sustainable business building training, including “team building and mentorship.”

Amy Bachman, DC Central Kitchen: DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) has been a leader in food recovery since its founding in 1989 by Robert Egger (now with L.A. Kitchen). “We recover raw, unprepared protein and produce to prepare 5,000 meals a day, which we deliver to homeless shelters and partner nonprofits,” explains Amy Bachman, Director of Procurement at DCCK.  “DC Central Kitchen seeks to prevent waste, whether it be human potential or perfectly nutritious, but otherwise wasted food.” The organization runs a Culinary Job Training program for chronically unemployed adults and employs over 70 of its culinary graduates through its own food-focused social enterprise ventures.

DCCK recovers approximately 3,000 lbs/day of food and delivers meals to over 80 partner nonprofits across D.C., all with its own staff, primarily graduates of the Culinary Job Training program, and fleet of 15 vehicles. It sources donated product from grocery stores, restaurants, catering companies, and wholesalers, and also runs volunteer gleaning trips to recover “seconds,” or imperfect produce, from local farms.

An early adopter of the social enterprise model, DCCK began hiring culinary graduates for revenue-generating catering contracts in 1996. With the launch of its Healthy School Food venture in 2008, DCCK signed on as a food service provider for schools in Washington, D.C. — currently 12 D.C. Public Schools and three private and charter schools serving low-income schoolchildren. In 2011, DCCK pioneered Healthy Corners, a venture aimed at selling nutritious snacks and fresh produce at below market prices to corner stores in D.C. “food deserts,” or areas with limited access to healthy food. Today, DCCK earns more than 60 percent of its income through social enterprise activities related to the Healthy School Food and Healthy Corners programs, and other catering contracts.

Cheryl Kollin, Community Food Rescue: Montgomery County, Maryland, (pop. 1.1 million), has calculated that food waste comprises 246,000 tons (23%) of its solid waste stream. At the same time, the county has 78,000 residents who experience hunger, and 35 percent of school children who qualify for free or reduced meals. “We started Community Food Rescue in September 2015 as a coordinated, collaborative food recovery network in Montgomery County,” explains Cheryl Kollin, Program Director of Community Food Rescue (CFR), a program of Manna Food Center, the county’s largest food recovery and distribution organization. “Since we started 18 months ago, CFR has recovered more than one million pounds of food that goes directly from donor to food assistance organizations. We have more than 120 donor partners, 35 food recipient organizations, and close to 80 runners who transport the food between donors and recipients.” Donations include prepared foods from restaurants, caterers and institutions, fresh produce from farms, and meat, dairy, bread and canned goods.

Underpinning CFR, and one of the innovations it has adopted, is ChowMatch, a web-based tool and mobile app that matches food donors with recipient organizations. ChowMatch was developed by Peninsula Food Runners in the San Francisco Bay area. Donors, recipients and volunteers create a profile; food donors post their donations as available and the app automatically matches the donation with one of the CFR network’s recipient organizations.. Volunteer food runners receive real-time alerts and the first volunteer to claim the run, gets it.. “All parties participating must follow uniform food safety protocols,” says Kollin. “CFR does food safety training, and we have great information resources available to our network partners. In addition, we facilitate capacity building grants, which have enabled organizations to purchase refrigerators, freezers and trucks. CFR celebrates all network participants with our recognition program. Third-party donor verification is done through Food Recovery Network’s Food Recovery Verified program.

Jeffrey Neal, Loop Closing: After a 24-year career with the Navy’s Civil Engineering Corps managing Navy and Marine Corps bases around the world, Jeffrey Neal launched Loop Closing in Washington, D.C. in 2015. Loop Closing is an urban composting service that establishes on-site composting and vermicomposting solutions at universities, multifamily buildings, businesses and organizations in and around Washington, D.C’s dense urban environment. “My foray into composting started with a worm bin at home, but the concept for the business developed when I completed the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Neighborhood Soil Rebuilders (NSR) training course over 2 years ago,” explains Neal. “The NSR training includes going into the community to help build on-site composting systems, which is where I recognized the opportunity for this type of service. Managing food scraps locally can be an IMBY — in my backyard — issue, not a NIMBY issue.”
Neal operates two on-site systems: a rat-resistant multibin system designed by Urban Farm Plans for hot composting at Howard University that manages about 6 tons/year of food scraps, and a vermicomposting set up at a condominum building. “The Howard University site is a few feet from a dormitory, and the vermicomposting is done in the basement of the condo, so the first step was to prove that composting can be done correctly, without any nuisances or pests, in these kinds of settings,” he notes. “The success of those pilots answered the question, ‘can I do this on-site?, so now we are focusing on closing the loop in terms of diverse markets for the finished compost. What we currently make is used in urban gardens, but our vision is to coordinate with farmers markets, where growers arrive with trucks full of produce and go home with trucks full of compost.”
Loop Closing plans to work with other universities in D.C., restaurants, grocery stores, and food recovery organizations, to set up composting or anaerobic digestion operations. “Depending on the scale, pressures, and the client’s budget, we may utilize in-vessel systems at some sites, stay with bin set-ups at others, or do something altogether different,” says Neal. “We’re forming partnerships with local food gleaners that divert food for reuse, and then Loop Closing will recycle what can’t be used and send the compost back to the farm or other markets.”