Arlan Preblud, started with a simple mission: feed hungry people and keep perfectly good food out of the trash.
After frequently volunteering at food banks, Preblud, a self-described foodie, decided to contact friends who worked at restaurants to find out what they did with leftover food.
“I began talking to some chefs I knew in the industry to ask what they did with food at the end of the night, and they said they just threw it away. I was shocked,” Preblud said. “I asked if they would be willing to donate it instead, and everyone immediately said yes.”
That led him to found , a Denver-based nonprofit that since 2009 has provided more than 17,753,447 servings to those in need and kept more than 2,220 tons of food from landfills.
Preblud discovered no laws keep restaurants, caterers or grocery stores from donating excess food.
“A lot of places said they choose to not donate because they don’t want to be held liable, but so long as a provider does everything necessary to protect the condition of the food, there is no liability,” Preblud said, citing the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act.
now has partnerships with more than 80 local food suppliers, including big-ticket names like the Pepsi Center and Coors Field. Volunteers comb through such venues after events for perfectly edible, unused food. They then deliver that food to more than 60 local recipients such as the Denver Rescue Mission and Food Bank of the Rockies.
“Let’s say caterers do an event for 300 plus people, they often prepare food for 500 because the worst case would be to run out. Then let’s say it rains and instead of 350 showing up, only about 200 do. All that food would normally be thrown away, but chefs will instead package it up and call us to pick it up and give to families who need it,” Preblud said, noting many recipients are classified as the “working poor,” who can’t routinely meet their nutritional needs.
According to We Don’t Waste, up to 40 percent of food produced daily in the U.S. is wasted, and between 72 billion to 133 billion pounds of food are thrown in landfills each year. And yet, .
“I think there was a lack of awareness about food waste and food insecurity, but in the last five years, it’s becoming more of an issue that people are addressing,” Preblud said.
We Don’t Waste also has worked to improve the quality of the donated food, Preblud said.
“Our sort of guideline is that if we wouldn’t eat it, we won’t deliver it,” Preblud said. “But society has become reliant on the artistic look of a product, so much that it trickles down to a warehouse guy refusing to put a bruised apple on display. If it’s a carrot that grows incorrectly, or a cucumber that’s not straight, a perfectly good vegetable ends up being thrown away. But in our case, we’ll take it.”
Angie Lopez, the food bank director for Thrive Church in Federal Heights, said those efforts have paid off.
Since the church partnered with the nonprofit a few months ago, the people who use the food bank say its quality has improved. They say they are “just glad to be getting fresh produce, just to be getting the good stuff,” Lopez said.
