I volunteer at a food bank, and the company that sends us our food decides what we get. Last Tuesday they sent so much produce we could not fit it all into fridges. We were trying to give away cases of the food on Wednesday, but people were turning it down because they had no place to store a case of tomatoes, or cauliflower. This was what we had left after last Wednesday’s morning give away. Not pictured the 5000lbs of watermelons, the 2500lbs of onions (those will last a lot longer).
The company that supplies us wants to move from sending shipments every other week, to once a month. This would cause even more no produce loss.
It is so frustrating to have all this food for it to go bad. Even if we got the same volume of produce, but there was variation in what it is we could give it away easier.
Edit: I posted this in a comment.
Because of bureaucracy we have to request this. If it is found out we are giving away the food to unapproved recipients we can lose all of our funding. If we give to unapproved recipients and they in turn give us prepared food to give out, that is okay.
Word got out that we were loading up my pickup with food and taking it to the homeless camps. I did get a number of them to start coming to the bank to get food. But it was easier when I could take stuff to them.
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and’s parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
pickle pickle pickle!
2% salted water brine, spices, glass weights to maintain under water in not-too-tight closed jars with co2 escape. keep at room temperature, and here you go!
The jars likely cost more than the volume of produce it could store.
Also - have to arrange logistics for labor, supplies, and a kitchen to do the boiling in. Now that you are making a cooked food product, your kitchen also likely needs a license.
And insurance in case your rushed pickling operation creates any jars that go foul and anyone gets sick.
Also – ew. Not even the destitute want pickled cauliflower.
I was nodding along until
Not even the destitute want pickled cauliflower.
It’s great!
Yep food pantries will repackage food but rarely process or cook it because that’s a whole different animal.
But, many food pantries I’ve worked with had ways to offload large amounts of things creatively, it’s how I got the best pear gelato I’ve ever had in my life.
Use 20L food safe buckets.
Pickeled cauliflower sounds so incredibly bad
You need to teach people how to do it themselves instead. They can do it in small groups helping each other making the event more joyful.
Wait - do you think that people who need food banks have a ton of free time for cooking clubs? Do you think it’s because they don’t work enough instead of what everyone knows which is that most people on the edge can’t make rent if they only have one job?
Why are you so judgemental without any reason?
Guess what, I work full time and I raised two kids alone and got time to cook. This being said, I fucking don’t know about them, but some would enjoy the initiative among them instead of being stuck with someone like you who is not seeking for solutions but someone else to blame.
Ooohhh I see, I am judgemental because your circumstances and stated preferences represent everyone in a hard place.
If you both could have and would have done it, it is completely reasonable to make that an expectation on everyone who struggles.
Your struggle was definitely representative of the worst circumstances bc you had 1 job and were a single parent – even though I mentioned how plenty of parents (including single ones) balance a FT job and gigs or a managerie of gigs. Or a FT job, single parenthood, and a disability. Or…
If you can’t see past your own life and circumstance, but want to proscribe what other people ‘should’ do (or no longer deserve your empathy), you are the one who is judgemental.
I’m one of the returns clerks in a Costco. First thing we do every morning is process stuff to send the food bank. It irks me how much stuff we aren’t allowed to send because the manufacturer won’t allow it. Even despite that we send a lot every day. Everything that does spoil at the food bank goes to a local pig farm, who donates pig products back to the food bank whenever he can.
We are trying to find one place that will consistently take our spoilage.
We get a lot of expired stuff from Walmart and the grocery store in town. But Walmart takes forever to get it to us. Usually when we get it, it is a week expired. Where the grocery store we get it a day or two before it actually expires.
Thank you pigs! Also compost piles.
It irks me how much stuff we aren’t allowed to send because the manufacturer won’t allow it.
Name and shame. This is such bullshit. I’m sure it’s some to protect brand value, but IMO you earn more value through kindness and generosity.
Well, all the Nestle stuff gets sent back to them. Pretty much all the big name cereal outfits have orders that damaged products are to be sent to a salvage company.
Happily most cheese and sliced meats can be donated, plus we generally send 8-10 shopping carts of baked goods and produce directly from us to them every day
yet another reason to really dig costco. huzzah, respect
There isn’t a food shortage. There are significant problems of wastage created by marketing value and poor distribution. Many solutions have been brought up over the years. To deaf ears. Because your local grocer needs to put 1000 tomatoes out to mostly rot because it looks aesthetically pleasing.
Okay but to be fair it’s very pretty
Do you have a Sikh temple nearby? They cook for the community.
It’s not the bureaucracy. It’s the capitalist that run the bureaucracy. In a society like this, it’s all about managing perception. It’s all about your brand. It’s about looking good and not doing good. As things start to centralize further and further, you’ll see what this is all about. In my town we have hooverviles. The homeless are there to remind you to work harder, or you’ll become homeless. Working inside the system will not work. Capitalism in the US Empire need overthrown.
The branding is one aspect, they definitely publicize the food bank donations and it’s often one of the few things food manufacturers do that sounds good. The rest is just profit and employing mass contract labor at near minimum wage.
If they threw out thousands of pounds of product it would look like a bad number if publicized… if they donate ten thousand pounds of tomatoes a couple days before they go bad they get to look like they donated ten thousand pounds of tomatoes in value, and then they get to write that off as a donation.
I’m pretty sure when they do said “donations” they get to write off the retail value, whereas if they just wrote it off as a loss to the business it would only be the actual cost.
Silly idle thought (for real): Suppose in a situation like this, particularly if people complain on the internet drawing attention to the fact that there’s 1000s of pounds of produce in a space that likely doesn’t have funding for strong security measures, a group of interested parties brought some trucks and took it without explicit permission or consent from the organization.
What’s the impact to the org in situations where this isn’t given away to unauthorized parties, but gets stolen instead?
I am in contact with someone now that may be facilitating something along these lines. Not to the extent with which you propose, but I am working on something.
Fair enough - glad you’re trying something to address this lot! Believe it or not, did actually mean this as a ‘what if/what are the ramifications for orgs like this if that happened’, but probably best not to entertain that yourself at the moment.
As a total aside, good song to keep spirits up today might be The Last Saskatchewan Pirate by Captain Tractor - very last line before final chorus is relevant :)
Good luck with what you’re doing!
If someone came and stole it all our parent entity would likely tell us we can no longer keep the door open to allow a breeze to come through the building. Or they would install metal bars on the doors.
They do this because they can write off the “donation” (e.g. garbage disposal)
All of this produce was going to go bad, they know what date it’s going bad, but they overproduce or customers cancelled orders or under ordered.
UNFI, the massive breached company, is going to have this same thing play out across the board from product wasting away in their warehouse.
I would set up a food collection spot just a few feet outside and ask people if they are kind enough to consider taking a case or two to donate there. This way I can redistributed the way I want with that second charity.
Thank you for your service ʘ‿ʘ
We are not allowed to simply give it out to anyone. This is not like a church pantry where all of the food is donated by the community and’s parishioners. There is government funding, as well as private businesses, which I am guessing get their money back from the government for funding this. If we could simply give it to anyone we would not be in this situation.
Yep. That’s really dumb. When people talk about government inefficiency, this is what they mean.
Is there any chance you have enough (wo)manpower to prepare and preserve it? Even watermelon can be pickled, dehydrated or made into a jam.
You’re doing your part, but someone else isn’t. Everyone should learn as part of their upbringing that wasting food is bad - just like littering and thousands of other things. Unfortunately we live in a world where someone has to be fined for them to realise they’re doing something wrong.
I have a large ice chest and a heavily restricted diet due to medical issues and my food banks won’t give me fresh produce unless I show proof of residency (they want you to have a refrigerator). The little daily snack pack with oreos and soda they give you otherwise isn’t worth the trip.
I have been volunteering feeding homeless for a number of years and I was never happier than when I was tasked with throwing away compromised food. The sadism of it mixed with the altruism, sweet Jesus.
Trade it to a restaurant in exchange for stuff they might have you actually want. Shouldn’t be hard to move tomato and onion
I don’t think restaurants are going to want hundreds of pounds of product at the very end of life in terms of freshness. This is the product the manufacturer couldn’t sell to a store for various reasons.
You saying some Italian joint couldn’t turn those tomatoes into mommas ragu 🤌🤌🤌
If you think restaurants only use stuff at peak freshness and of the highest quality buddy I got bad news for you.
Tax Churches Into Oblivion. A society that runs off a charity is a society that doesn’t function. Christians always side with the fascist when they come to power. The private businesses are the fascist. The United States supported the Nazis during World War II. This was all to weaken the Soviet Union. America is an imperialist empire and fascists are the useful idiots of empire. The bureaucracy is just basically how things work. And there are rules for things for a reason. Trump and Elon Musk love bureaucracy. They just want it to work for them. Capitalism is a wasteful system. It prioritizes the profit incentive and sometimes over producing and outpacing your competitor until you corner the market. Charity is just one way to manage perception especially if you get less taxes. It doesn’t make sense on purpose because fulfilling people’s needs is not its purpose. Charity is a business and it’s not about helping people. Even if it’s a Christian church. We no longer produce our own food, and big agriculture is the only thing we got. We have enough to make sure people don’t go hungry. But the capitalist wants you to go hungry. Or pay the highest price possible. But less than the guy down the street, that’s competing with them. The nonsensical madness that surrounds me on the daily is just, it makes sense if you know how things work.
this has nothing to do with churches.
This is companies maximizing their tax deduction by donating at retail value instead of writing off the loss of actual cost.
This happens ( was exposed) at our local foodbank. (London, UK)
