Corporate Kitchen Food to the Rescue!

Lots of offices have employee lunchrooms with microwaves, refrigerators, sinks, coffee-makers and TVs, but as often happens in the business world, size matters. Today, many large corporations, firms, and businesses have dining rooms and lunch programs for their employees; but along with corporate lunch programs comes food waste. That’s where Second Helpings Atlanta (SHA) comes in.

Over the past year, in our continual quest to increase our impact on the community we serve, SHA has implemented a thriving Corporate Kitchen Food Rescue Program. Our corporate Food Donors include Cox Enterprises, Inc., Cox Automotive, Fiserv, LexisNexis, Piedmont Healthcare, General Electric, ADP, the U.S. Federal Reserve System, UPS, and Alston & Bird.

Working with corporate kitchens allows us the opportunity to educate employees about hunger, food waste and the impact they have on our environment. We can inspire employees to take action by providing them with meaningful volunteer experiences such as rescuing food from their own dining halls, adopting an open SHA route, volunteering for SHA in IT, event planning or marketing, and encouraging them to have a company-wide food drive benefiting our Partner Agencies. Employees can even include SHA in their charitable giving programs, and we have the potential of gaining some wonderful corporate sponsorships!

In the last 5 months of 2015, we rescued 37,832 pounds of food from these generous corporations. This year, we are on track to reach over 120,000 pounds by year end, enough food to provide 100,000 meals to those in need. And just think … we only rescue food from a few corporations at this point. Imagine the food rescue opportunities across metro Atlanta!

We use a refrigerated truck to rescue food from some of our larger corporate kitchens, and this allows us to offer additional Volunteer opportunities. You can sign-up to meet the truck at one or more corporate locations and help load food onto the truck, and you can even sign-up to ride along in the truck for the whole route, assisting the driver in loading and delivering the food. Please contact Laura Labovitz at volunteer@secondhelpings.infoto get trucking!

If your company might be interested in joining our Corporate Kitchen Food Rescue Program, or if you know of any corporations that we should reach out to, please contact Joe Labriola at director@secondhelpings.info.