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Rescued Groceries Feed the Food Insecure

Daily Table is a re­tail gro­cery store that brings aff or­d­able gro­cer­ies and healthy pre­pared meals to Dorchester, a Bo­ston neigh­bor­hood typ­ic­ally un­der­served by healthy food op­tions. Daily Table is able to offer low prices by us­ing produce that is either in excess supply, near its expiration date, or cosmetically blemished, but is nutritionally sound. Us­ing this re­covered food lowers costs, mak­ing it pos­sible to offer tasty, nu­tri­tious, ready-to-eat meals at prices com­pet­it­ive with un­healthy op­tions such as fast food.

The food is provided by a large net­work of grow­ers, dis­trib­ut­ors, man­u­fac­tur­ers, and other, mostly local, sup­pli­ers, who donate their ex­cess healthy food, or provide spe­cial buy­ing op­por­tun­it­ies for Daily Table.

RELEVANCE OF SOLUTION
Nearly 15% of Amer­ican house­holds were food in­sec­ure at some point dur­ing 2014, yet more than one-third of adults in the USA are obese or over­weight. All the more troub­ling is the fact that every year 60 mil­lion tons of food is wasted in the USA 3 at the con­sumer and re­tailer levels. By util­iz­ing the 30% to 40% of food that nor­mally goes to waste, Daily Table is help­ing to solve these in­ter­twined chal­lenges.

TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE:

ENVIRONMENTAL
Within eight months of its launch, Daily Table had re­covered ap­prox­im­ately 272,155 kg of food that would oth­er­wise have been wasted.

SOCIAL
By in­creas­ing ac­cess to af­ford­able ex­cess pro­duce, Daily Table helps re­duce food in­sec­ur­ity while pro­mot­ing healthy eat­ing habits.

ECONOMIC
Elim­in­at­ing food waste can save up to $162 bil­lion a year just in the USA.