Meet the Panel

• David Bobanick (Moderator): David is the executive director of Harvest Against Hunger, an organization dedicated to reducing hunger and food waste by connecting farmers, transportation providers, volunteers, and hunger relief organizations. Under his leadership over the last 20+ years, the organization has become a nationally recognized leader in food systems innovation. David is also thought leader in the field and was recently named a “Food Waste Innovator” by ReFED.

• Emily Hovis: Emily is an assistant teaching professor at the University of Washington with experience in public education, food safety and environmental compliance. Emily recently worked with the Washington State Department of Ecology to develop a statewide food rescue mapping tool to help connect food businesses to hunger relief organizations. She is also the owner of Triple H Family Farm, a 30+ acre livestock farm in Lewis County.

• Sara Osborne: Sarah serves as the senior director of public and government affairs at Safeway, where she leads their sustainability and food waste efforts, particularly from the operations side. At Safeway, she recently deployed a new food recovery initiative in partnership with Seattle Public Utilities and Feeding Feasible Feasts focused on delivering food on the same day to hunger relief agencies.

• Emily Penna: Emily is the senior manager of food security at FareStart, a social enterprise nonprofit focused on job training and employment in the food industry. Emily is focused on innovating new ways to increase access to local foods for all communities, as well as ways to preserve and upcycle food. Emily has worked at the cross section of food security, local foods, and workforce development in Seattle for the past 10 years.

• Angel Swanson: Angel is the executive director of Feeding Feasible Feasts, a pioneering organization that provides 24/7 access to reclaimed food through innovative community hubs. Angel is a seasoned entrepreneur, passionate food justice advocate, and elected member of the Washington Food Coalition. She was also previously recognized by President Biden’s Office and the Pierce County Council for groundbreaking work in food sustainability and equity.

  
  

Discussion Themes

Importance of Being Human Centered: When providing food to a specific community, make sure you take the time to understand the foods they want and need the most. Many groups, especially minorities, may not voice their food needs due to stigma or power dynamics. Angel Swanson talked about how Feeding Feasible Feasts collects a great deal of data to better understand and meet the needs of their customers. If you’re working in food recovery, she said, remember to get out and talk to people and do your research – try to match the supply with the demand.

Need for Simplicity: As Sara Osborne reminded us, don’t put an additional burden on the food waste generators, especially smaller businesses. For farmers, it’s a lot easier to throw something away than take the extra steps to salvage it, especially after a long day in the field. Additionally, high turnover rates in food retail make it challenging to train people on food donation policies and practices. We need to design programs and systems that keep things simple and make it as easy as possible for farms and businesses to donate.

Creativity in Upcycling: Imagine receiving hundreds of pounds of a single ingredient, like zucchini, all when it’s on the verge of going bad. This is a common challenge that hunger relief organizations face. Emily Penna described how FareStart manages this through upcycling, such as flash freezing produce so it can be used to create a different product later in the year. Another example she shared is how FareStart works with bakers to upcycle day-old bread into products like croutons. This type of creativity is key to ensuring that donated food doesn’t go to waste.

Lack of Resources & Infrastructure: Across the board, food banks and hunger relief organizations struggle with access to adequate resources and infrastructure. Many operations rely heavily on volunteers, who receive inconsistent training and may not be as dependable as employees. On the infrastructure side, cold storage capacity is a major pain point, especially for food banks in rural areas — some organizations are lucky if they have a two-door fridge. Transportation, specifically refrigerated vehicles and drivers, is another challenge that often prevents donated food from reaching the people who need it. As David Bobanick emphasized, one of the industry’s top priorities is to identify sustainable funding sources.

Safety First: With her background in food safety, Emily Hovis reminded us that not all food should be donated. Safety and appropriateness matter a lot. This reminded us of a sentiment shared during this year’s ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit — if you wouldn’t be willing to eat it yourself, you shouldn’t donate it. To ensure food quality and safety, education among food waste generators and volunteers is critically important.

Food as a Driver of Dignity: Providing high quality, nutrient-dense, and culturally appropriate food is an opportunity to remind people of their humanity. Engage the community and ask people what they want. Let people choose food that aligns with their needs and their culture. As Angel put it, “Food is more than calories; it’s what makes you feel whole, like home, like you’ve gotten what you need.”

Workshop Highlights

Following our panel discussion, we facilitated an interactive workshop with the following “How Might We” prompts, which target critical food recovery issues and were designed in collaboration with the panelists and other food system experts:

• Awareness & Action: How might we make it easier for food businesses to discover and connect with local hunger relief organizations in their area?

• Funding: How might we create more sustainable funding models for food rescue programs?

• Community Voice: How might we ensure that communities most affected by food insecurity have a meaningful voice in designing food rescue programs?

• Capacity Matching: How might we better, and more quickly, match the volume and type of available food with organizations that have the capacity and need for it?

• Quality & Appropriateness: How might we increase the availability of high quality, appropriate, and nutrient dense foods in food rescue programs?

• Education & Behavior Change: How might we improve food businesses’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices around food waste reduction?

  
  

There were many great ideas that came out of the rapid ideation, including a few below:

• A Reallocation Agency to Improve Capacity Matching: Participants imagined a statewide reallocation system to connect food donors with distribution networks in real-time and how technology could help match food services.

• Infrastructure to Extend Life of Rescued Food: Ideas included partnering with faith-based organizations who might have extra space, putting smaller freezers within retailers, flash freezing produce, and giving people opportunities to claim food online.

• Regional Food Rescue Network / Platform: One group designed a marketplace where hunger relief organizations could identify food rescue and surplus opportunities via an online platform.

  
  

Final Thoughts

Food rescue is as much about people as it is about logistics — as Sara Osborne put it: “Success means that after you donate it, it gets to a human.”

This mini workshop showcased the value of bringing people together with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, but it just scratches the surface of the potential opportunities and solutions. There is still much work to be done, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with experts in the food waste and food justice spaces to design sustainable and human-centered solutions.

Thank you to all our panelists, table moderators, and participants who are working to shift food waste into food justice. As one attendee Julie Bernstein shared with us, this was an “inspiring event about food dignity, partnership, and imagination!”