A Food Rescue volunteer's car is loaded up with goods from Target. The food will be distributed to local nonprofit organizations and used to feed people in need. (Courtesy of Food Rescue)

New Nonprofit Chapter, Local Businesses Team Up to Donate Tons of Food

Over the first eight months of 2024, more than 78,000 pounds of food were saved by volunteers with Food Rescue: Lansing Communities. The local chapter works with grocery stores, restaurants and businesses to collect food before it spoils, distributing it to groups that support communities experiencing food insecurity.

Participating East Lansing donors include Target, Whole Foods and Trader Joes.

Valerie Lafferty is a codirector of Food Rescue: Lansing Communities and spoke with ELi about the journey local activists took to realize the organization’s goal.

“The Food Rescue US is a national nonprofit,” she said, “and we started our [local] site in September of last year. There’s no money exchanged at all. They give us their app for free and I guess what they get from us is our stats; how much we save and who it’s donated to.”

Food Rescue is a nationally-operating nonprofit organization that started a Lansing-area branch last year. Food rescue volunteers distribute food from local stores, restaurants and business that may have otherwise spoiled to people in need. (Courtesy of Food Rescue)

Lafferty began her involvement through the League of Women Voters, working on organic waste management.

“We realized that it was something that ordinary people, if we worked collectively, could make a big difference,” she said. “And that appealed to me. Our deal was trying not to waste and then feeding those in need is just such a bonus. It’s the mission of trying to save good food and get it to the right spot. I think it really rings a bell with the volunteers that we have. They’re mostly retired and I think they love the idea of that, and that we’re all sort of saving the planet.”

With just seven volunteers and only a handful of donating businesses, the effort began. Today, there are more than 70 enrolled volunteers.

Chip Chamberlain of East Lansing has been one of those volunteers for about 10 months.

“One of the beauties of this food rescue, from a volunteer perspective, is how flexible it is,” Chamberlain said. “I’ve never been an Uber driver, but apparently there’s an app where drivers can go and see what ride requests are out there, and they can just grab a ride request on the app. It’s similar with Food Rescue. There’s an app I’ve got on my phone and I can just check in whenever I have a free day coming up and it will tell me what food rescues are coming up. 

“Maybe it’ll have me going to the Walmart out on the westside or the Target in East Lansing. It’ll say [when to get there] and roughly how much food you’re going to be picking up so you know if your vehicle is large enough. It also tells you where you’re going to deliver it. Each volunteer event I do is typically just one pick-up and delivery so it’ll take maybe a couple of hours depending where each spot is located.”

Chip Chamberlain loads food donations. Chamberlain is a volunteer who brings food from East Lansing businesses like Trader Joe’s to nonprofit organizations like homeless shelter Haven House. (Dustin DuFort Petty for ELi)

Chamberlain has been retired for five years and appreciates the opportunity to give his time to the noble effort.

“I really appreciate seeing firsthand the various social service agencies that we deliver to,” he said. “ I’ve taken food to Haven House in East Lansing. I’ve gone to Cristo Ray and Advent House in Lansing. They’re places I’ve heard of several times over the years, but to be able to see them doing the work they’re doing and help the people they’re helping, it’s very rewarding; getting them the food because they’re the front lines and they get the food to the people [who] need it.”

Paden Clevenger is the volunteer and projects manager for Haven House and has seen the impact of Food Rescue on her clients.

“Some organizations will have a food rescue volunteer go to the store on their behalf and bring them back to them,” she said. “Our situation is a little bit different because we only feed 30 people for meals, so I actually get to go to the grocery store myself, find the items that would work for us at the shelter here and bring them back and distribute them.”

Clevenger told ELi that she goes to Target once a week to pick up food that would otherwise go to waste.

“It helps us [Haven House] save money,” she said, “but it also helps us provide foods for our clients we wouldn’t normally be able to provide. We provide three meals a day for our clients. We provide a hot meal at dinnertime and we provide food for clients to make for the other meals throughout the day. Oftentimes, we are able to get things like juice boxes and flavored waters and sodas and things like that that we can’t purchase, but we can provide those things to our clients. We also often get a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and a variety of things that would be difficult for us to provide without the assistance of Food Rescue. It allows more variety for our clients.”

A car fully loaded with food that otherwise may have gone to waste. The food was distributed to local nonprofit organizations. (Courtesy of Food Rescue)

There are also times when Haven House can receive non-food items through Food Rescue. They have received a box of diapers and a highchair in the past, Clevenger said.

“We’re really thankful for the whole breadth of items we receive from them,” she said.

Lafferty said donations from businesses come at varying levels, noting that Trader Joe’s in East Lansing donates food three times per week, with three cars going each time to pick up.

Trader Joe’s actually spurred the group to create a new initiative.

“We give away Trader Joe’s flowers and plants,” Lafferty said. “They ask us to do that seven days of the week and we have wonderful volunteers that take them all over the place. We call it ‘Spread the Joy.’ They take them to a lot of senior facilities and just places that don’t expect that — like somebody took it to the police department, and they loved it.”

Those interested in learning more about Food Rescue: Lansing Communities can contact lansingcommunitiesmi@foodrescue.us. Lafferty told ELi the chapter is always looking to add donating businesses, receiving agencies, volunteers and financial donations.

“You know,” she said, “I think everybody knows that 30 to 40% of our food is wasted and if we had better connections, better logistics in place, we could save a lot more. We’re doing that. We’re creating change in our community.”