Up to 40% of the food supply in the U.S. is wasted every year, according to the USDA. A Greater Cincinnati nonprofit is using an Uber-style phone app to redirect extra food to people who need it instead.
Patty Goddard of Sycamore Township is one of hundreds of volunteers for Last Mile Food Rescue. She brought WVXU along for a recent food rescue, pulling up the app on her phone to show how it works.
"So we got our directions; we've arrived at pickup," Goddard said. "And that [phone number] is if you need to call ahead. But I come here all the time, so you know, they know me."
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Goddard has done hundreds of these rescues since 2020, every Monday and Thursday at a UDF in Reading. Sometimes the donated food fills up far more than the trunk of her car.
"Last week it was stacked in the front seat, back seat, the seats were down," Goddard said.
This pickup is no different; Goddard counts 44 boxes of donuts, eight gallons of milk, and 10 crates full of loaves of bread, bottles of iced tea, and prepared food items like sandwiches.
Without organizations like Last Mile Food Rescue, this food would end up in a landfill, rotting and releasing climate-damaging methane into the atmosphere. Throwing away edible food also wastes the resources required to grow and manufacture it.
"Unfortunately, sometimes with ordering, you get short-coded items — items that there's not enough time to send to the store for them to be able to sell it," said Valerie Berner, director of guest experience for UDF. "We want to keep it on our shelf as long as we possibly can, but we also want to make sure we can get it to people to consume before it's too late and absolutely nobody can have it."
The EPA says food is the single largest category of material put in municipal landfills. Last Mile Food Rescue just reached an estimated 10 million pounds of food rescued from the landfill since 2020.
UDF and Kroger are Last Mile's two biggest partners. They also pick up extra food from restaurants, the three major stadiums, even some hospitals and schools.
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It's all thanks to this app that makes it easy for a volunteer to find a pickup location nearby.
"You just push 'next,' and it sends the picture, and then it will tell us where we're gonna go," Goddard explained.
Goddard is taking her load full of UDF food to St. John United Church of Christ, where all this food will be part of a weekly food pantry. It's less than a mile away, just a few minutes drive.
"The vast majority — 90% — of our rescues are within a 15-minute drive or less," said Crystal Cottrill, senior manager of relationships with Last Mile Food Rescue. "We're able to mobilize our volunteers that go out — some several days a week — to pick up rescued food ... then they deliver them directly to our partner agencies like soup kitchens, after-school programs, food pantries; that's where they're able to serve the folks that need it the most."
With about 700 volunteers accepting at least one pickup a year in the app, Last Mile is rescuing more and more food waste every year. That now includes catering excess after events like the Cincinnati Zoo's Zoofari and Zoo-La-La, and leftovers from large events like Oktoberfest and Taste of Cincinnati.
"We have our volunteers that are going out that day passing out flyers, talking to all the different food vendors, getting them ready in case they do have excess food at the end of the night," Cottrill said. "Then we have a second round of volunteers that are going around with carts and pans ... at the end of this event."
At St. John United Church of Christ, a few church members help Patty Goddard unpack her car and pile the UDF-donated food onto several long tables in the basement. In just a few days, up to a hundred people will attend this food pantry and pick out the groceries they need. Deacon Kathy Culver helps run the pantry.
"We offer dog and cat food, vegetables, fruit, peanut butter..." she explained.
The pantry has other donors, and they purchase some items they know are in high demand, but most of their food comes from Patty Goddard's weekly delivery of UDF donations.
"And everything we get on Mondays and Thursdays, we give out on Thursday afternoon," Culver said.
Delivering a food rescue is just as easy as picking up.
"We just enter that, and that shows up that we completed it," Goddard demonstrates in the app. "We close it, and we give it a rating. I'd say this is a pretty good rescue today."
Last Mile Food Rescue is always looking for new volunteers, but the biggest need right now is more food donors.
