Less food waste. More family meals.: Encouraging shared mealtime by redirecting surplus prepared food as take-home dinners to families with children.

Commodities

Practices

• Sustainable Communities: food loss and waste recovery/reduction

After source reduction, redirecting surplus food to feed people
is the highest priority action for preventing and diverting food
waste.  Among the types of food to be redirected,
good-to-eat prepared food is the most valuable because of the
value of the raw ingredients as well as the additional labor and
other resources involved in the preparation.  Despite the
high value of prepared food, ReFED data indicates that only 0.75%
of surplus prepared food from the food service sector was donated
in 2022.  Redirecting surplus prepared food as free,
take-home family meals provides a valuable benefit to food
insecure families, in terms of both the nutritional value of the
food and the additional time and money parents and caregivers
gain from not having to shop for and prepare a meal.  

Funding for the Pete’s Garden SARE Community Foods Project would
be used to demonstrate the viability and growth potential of a
program to redirect surplus prepared food as free take-home
family dinners to food insecure families.  Funding will
support the creation and distribution of a “playbook” for how
organizations in other cities/regions can start their own family
meal distribution program by recovering and redirecting surplus
prepared food.  In completing this project, we will validate
ReFED data on the amount of prepared food currently being donated
in the Kansas City market and estimate the total amount of
surplus prepared food that is good-to-eat and donatable in our
market.   In completing this project, we will also
engage in outreach to inspire and enable similar research and
programs in other markets.

Over the course of the 3-year grant we will:

1. Develop and implement a replicable methodology for
   establishing a baseline and sizing the growth opportunity for
   prepared food recovery in a local market; apply this methodology
   to the Kansas City market.
   • Interview Kansas City food pantries and community
     kitchens that accept prepared food donations to capture
     baseline date on poundage and type of food currently
     recovered.
   • Compare the baseline estimate we develop for Kansas City
     to ReFED state-level data for prepared food waste in Kansas
     and Missouri.
   • Interview Kansas City composters that work with food
     service businesses to identify businesses that may be
     composting good-to-eat, donatable food.
   • Interview at least 10 food service managers who do not
     donate to understand their concerns or impediments to
     prepared food donation.
   • Survey at least 100 Kansas City restaurants, caterers,
     and food service operations to assess current practices
     regarding surplus food.
   • Use interview and survey results to estimate the total
     amount of wasted prepared food available for donation.
2. Develop and implement a replicable plan to establish and
   scale-up a local program for redirecting surplus prepared food as
   free, take-home family meals, using Pete’s Garden as a model;
   develop a “playbook” to disseminate this information to other
   cities/regions.
   • Present the Pete’s Garden meal distribution model at the
     annual ReFED conference in 2026 and 2027.
   • Identify at least 2 other relevant regional or national
     conferences and present the Pete’s Garden meal distribution
     model at those conferences.
3. Build awareness and buy-in regarding food loss/waste and food
   recovery within the Kansas City food service sector, resulting in
   a 2x increase in the amount of surplus prepared food donated to
   feed people in the Kansas City market, from 200,000 pounds
   (current baseline estimate) to 400,000 pounds, over the 3-year
   grant period.
4. Incorporate the Pete’s Garden case study into the Kids
   Feeding Kids curriculum and present to 200 teachers and at least
   15,000 FACS and Culinary Arts students over the 3-year grant
   period.
   • Use pre/post student surveys to demonstrate that student
     awareness of the food waste problem increased because of
     their participation in Kids Feeding Kids.