Ever wondered what restaurants, schools or hospitals do with food they’ve prepared but didn’t use? Much of it is thrown out, a sad fact when weighed against the thousands of Minnesotans who do not have access to enough food to feed themselves and their families.
All Seasons Food Rescue (ASFR), EFN’s food rescue program, gives those in the food service industry a socially responsible alternative to disposing excess food in landfills. With a focus on environmental responsibility, ASFR partners with a large number of licensed food business (i.e. restaurants, schools, hospitals, retailers, food distribution companies) to safely and efficiently collect nutritious prepared or perishable food that would otherwise go to waste. In turn, EFN rapidly delivers this food to the on-site meal programs in its network that are certified to safely handle non-shelf-stable foods.
With the help of ASFR, our agencies are able to serve hot, nutritious meals to hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans facing hunger each year. In 2007, the ASFR program rescued and distributed approximately 835,000 meals (or 171,050 pounds of food) to area on-site meal programs, helping them save nearly $600,000.