Four-star meals for the needy

Editorial
January 15, 2012
Boston Globe

Leftover, still-edible food from Boston restaurants should be served up later in soup kitchens and food pantries around the city. There’s no good reason why day-old baked goods and vats of soup should fill dumpsters instead of hungry stomachs. But in Boston, much of that food doesn’t make it to the plates of those who need it because of two barriers: food-safety guidelines and the threat of lawsuits from the rare case of illness caused by donated foods. Fortunately, there are sound ways to address both concerns.

A bill on Beacon Hill would help eliminate the threat of lawsuits, and encourage more donations by offering restaurants a tax credit for the value of the leftover food that they give to charities. The Legislature should pass the bill quickly, especially since the donations to food pantries around the state have dipped in the down economy.

Many restaurateurs say they would donate excess foods if they could do so without the fear of lawsuits. The law would eliminate that threat by holding restaurants harmless in the event of illness thought to be caused by donated foods. According to the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, it’s not even clear under current laws whether a restaurant could be held liable; but whether it’s true or not, that perception stands in the way of many donations.

At the same time, the city should continue to enforce its strict food safety regulations, even if that means some donations must be thrown out. While tough, the regulations exist for a good reason: Meals served to people in need should be handled properly, just as if they were being served to paying costumers.

Fortunately, nonprofits, like Lovin’ Spoonfuls in Brookline, exist to help ensure leftover meals are delivered and handled properly. Rules providing that prepared foods stay at the right temperature are necessary; but at this point, much of the city’s leftovers are thrown out regardless of how they have been handled. A simple clarification to the law could change that. And with more food up for grabs, more of it would make it to the table instead of the trash.

See this article online.

Lovin’ Spoonfuls: Assisting Restaurants & Helping Boston’s Needy, One Fresh Meal at a Time

by Lisa DeCanio
January 13th, 2012
BostInno

One warm December afternoon, Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese food truck was scheduled to come to Dewey Square for a rare lunchtime appearnce. I fasted in anticipation all morning, but just before lunchtime, I saw the following tweets sent by Roxy’s:

Disappointed and starving, I frantically clicked on the profile of @LovinFoodRescue, wondering who, if not me, would get to enjoy my precious grilled cheese.

I was immediately humbled. Turns out, the benefactors of Roxy’s uneaten grilled cheese would be local shelters and soup kitchens.

Lovin’ Spoonfuls is a local non-profit organization that facilitates the rescue of perishable, prepared and unserved foods from restaurants and supermarkets and distributes them to shelters in the greater Boston area. While most associate shelters with preservative-laden canned foods, Lovin’ Spoonfuls focuses on fresh, healthy and nutritious food, from day-old produce straight off grocery store shelves to surpluses of dishes from professionally-catered events.

“Lovin’ Spoonfuls thinks of body and soul nourishing food as a privilege, not a right,” says founder and executive director Ashley Stanley.  “It’s about providing access and trying to bridge that gap between abundance and need.”

That abundance can amount to 100 billion pounds of wasted food per year. In fact, Stanley’s own abundance of leftovers after one extravagant lunch inspired her to create change in the system. Curious, she Googled “what happens to wasted food?” and came across organizations like Food Runners in San Francisco and Philabundance in Philadelphia. “I quickly realized others were addressing the issue under the term ‘food rescue,’” says Stanley, and she began a one-woman show of chauffeuring leftover food to Boston shelters in an attempt to make a difference.

Boston’s food community began to take notice, and thanks to endorsements from longtime restaurateurs like Christopher Myers, as well as the power of social media, Stanley’s mission to make Boston a well-fed city turned into a full-blown non-profit organization by the name of Lovin’ Spoonfuls about two years ago.

“A lot of the waste that happens in restaurants is mostly chefs over-ordering things,” says Jamie Bissonnette, culinary mastermind behind Toro and Coppa, who grew up working in a grocery store where he watched perfectly edible produce thrown away just because it was visibly imperfect. “As a chef, and as a human, I try not to waste anything – whether it’s wood, tile or food,” he says of supporting food rescue and Lovin’ Spoonfuls.

“Spoonfuls is not doing work in a vacuum,” Stanley adds. “These guys are chefs – they feed people, and they take that outlook and apply it to a larger population. This [extra] food can feed people who are hungry, and we give them the option to do that.”

Local organizations like The Pine Street Inn, The Boston Rescue Mission and Bridge Over Troubled Waters benefit from restaurant leftovers and produce from Stop & Shop, Whole Foods and Allandale Farm through Lovin’ Spoonfuls deliveries.

“Food rescue means that we can continue to fulfill our mission in tough economic times when there seems to be a greater demand for soup kitchens,” says Jon Klein of the Haley House, which runs a local soup kitchen. Klein describes the fresh whole wheat pizzas with eggplant and gourmet cheeses made from a recent Lovin’ Spoonfuls delivery, saying, “We really emphasize not just feeding the homeless, but feeding them healthy food like fresh grains, fruits and vegetables.”

“There’s these trendy food terms right now – local, sustainable, farm-to-table,” says Stanley. “We’re hoping that those words don’t lose their value. We need to remember that not everybody’s table looks the same.”

Lovin’ Spoonfuls has a big year ahead, having just acquired a second truck to keep up with the high demand for deliveries. For the next few months, Stanley and her team will focus on building out the process of serving Boston healthy meals and making the message of food recuse and resdistribution widespread so that someday everyone’s table will indeed look the same.

“It’s so simple,” says Stanley. “There’s enough – let’s bring it to the folks who need it.”

See this article online.

On December 12, Lovin’ Spoonfuls was featured on Chronicle 5′s “Game-Changers” show.  Watch the video here.

Person of Interest: Ashley Stanley

By Casey Lyons
December 2011
Boston Magazine

On a warm morning this fall, Ashley Stanley hoists large plastic bags brimming with broccoli and kale from a Weston farm into a van emblazoned with a heart-shaped wooden spoon and the name Lovin’ Spoonfuls.

What started out two years ago as a few boxes in the trunk of her Land Rover has become a two-truck, three-employee operation. Along the way, this 32-year-old in Ray-Ban aviators and a baggy blue hoodie has made herself one of the major players in Boston food rescue, with contracts to save more than half a million pounds of food from farms and supermarkets each year.

It all began in late 2009, when Stanley sat down to lunch with her mother at Captain Marden’s Seafoods in Wellesley. The portions were huge. “There’s so much food on the table,” Stanley said to her mother. “We could probably feed four or five people with what’s here.”

The next morning, she typed a query into Google: What happens to wasted food?

Suddenly, Stanley had an idea. She was already looking for a new career, “something a little more relevant,” and maybe rescuing food could be it. But there wasn’t even an organization, let alone a job. So she set out to see what wasted food actually looks like. She talked her way into the back of the Trader Joe’s in Coolidge Corner and was shocked by what she found: In busy grocery stores, a nick, scratch, or cosmetic blemish is all it takes for produce to be pulled from the floor. There were pallets full of the stuff.

To Stanley, the solution was as obvious as the problem. “We have the power to provide access to fresh, healthy food,” she says, “so why not?”

And that’s how Ashley Stanley became a truck driver. Even as she works to add volume and reach, what she’s really hoping for is the day her organization becomes obsolete.

“It would be a great day at work to come in and have someone say, ‘Hey, we don’t need the food. We’re all set. We’ve actually dealt with the hunger issue, so you need to find another job.’”

See this article online.