Leah Lizarondo, Co-Founder and CEO of Food Rescue Hero
Take us back to the beginning! Tell us about 412 Food Rescue in Pittsburgh and how you came up with the idea for the Food Rescue Hero app.
I co-founded 412 Food Rescue in 2015 with Gisele Fetterman. We are both immigrants who had the common experience of moving to this country where there’s a surplus of everything, but there’s still hunger and poverty. In fact, Americans waste 40% of food while 1 in 5 people goes hungry.
I know that many people have visceral reactions to waste and a desire to help. We just needed a way to connect these and give people an easy way to take action! I saw the success of for-profit tech platforms like UberEats, and thought why not apply the same principle to help volunteers redistribute surplus food?
What makes this technology so unique?
Because food surplus at retail businesses — where almost half of food waste occurs — is relatively small in quantity, unpredictable, and needs to be consumed immediately, conventional logistics models do not work to costeffectively redirect extra food. That’s where Food Rescue Hero comes in. Our app mobilizes the largest, on-demand volunteer transport network in the world to rescue surplus food and bring it to charities in need. Because our network of “Food Rescue Heroes” is over 21,000-strong, it is also resilient and very agile. Sometimes people don’t believe me when I explain that our Food Rescue Heroes are all volunteers, but we have a service level of 99%!
412 Food Rescue has been using the app for six years, and in 2020 the organization rescued 7.9 million pounds of surplus food. Tell us about the overall impact 412 Food Rescue is having in Pittsburgh.
Since our launch, 412 Food Rescue’s incredible Food Rescue Heroes have prevented over 17 million pounds of good food from going to landfills. We work with more than 800 nonprofit distribution partners to make use of perfectly good surplus food from more than 600 donors, mostly grocery stores and restaurants. This past year, we were honored to be able to support our friends in the restaurant industry while feeding people in need through a new program called Community Takeout. We also operate a kitchen, where our Good Food Project team turns donated surplus food into nutritious ready-toeat meals. And our UglyCSA program saves previously unsellable produce from local farmers and is now the fifth largest CSA program in the region.
How many cities now have this app technology, and what is your vision for this app in the future?
I am so proud to say that 10 cities across North America now use Food Rescue Hero to scale food recovery! Together, we have rescued more than 41 million pounds of food. That’s 34 million meals! In support of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals 2, 12 and 13, our goal is to scale food recovery in 100 cities by 2030.
What has been the biggest surprise for you doing this work?
We knew people were going to step up - but we didn't know they were going to step up so quickly and in these numbers.
Anything else you would like to add?
Whenever I share what Food Rescue Hero does, I always hear “Wow, I have always thought that needed to happen!” It's not a unique idea. What is different is that we decided to actually DO IT. And that is always what I want to leave people with. Make your ideas happen. Now is the time.
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