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can all take your seats we'll get started here well thank you many thanks for joining us as we commence the 12th annual Iowa hunger summit my name is Madeline Goble and I'm the director of the Iowa hunger summit and community outreach here for the World Food Prize it is an honor to welcome you all here this morning our schedule this morning will include three panels and a special keynote by our president ambassador Quinn our first panel on food recovery will look at how food waste undermines food insecurity and we'll address cross-sector discussion as we focus on food waste and recovery that highlights not only collaboration but really looking at how our nonprofit and private sectors look to collaborate to create better and more elaborate initiatives our second panel is the economics of snap will focus on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the varying economic and community based outcomes of the program both in rural and urban areas throughout our state of Iowa at 10:45 will have a special keynote by ambassador Kenneth Quinn who will discuss the IO shares campaign and recognize the 1979 efforts to aid Cambodian victims the Khmer Rouge regime our final panel this morning will be led by Aegis trust their panelists will engage in a conversation on the relationship between nutrition's violence prevention and mental health now we will begin these important conversations with Lee Hensel who will moderate our first panel she is the communications and marketing coordinator for the Iowa waste reduction Center at the University of Northern Iowa she joined I WRC in 2006 and has taken a special interest in topics of food waste reduction she also leads the Iowa food waste stakeholder group please join me in welcoming the lead and the panelists to the stage thank you everybody so I'm sure many of you know the statistics surrounding the issues we're here to talk about today the feeding America reports that one in eight Iowans are food insecure and the Natural Resources Defense Council reports that of all the food that's produced in the u.s. we're wasting 40% of it so with so much food being wasted and so many people not knowing where their next meal is coming from it's created across sector understanding that food waste undermines food security so today our panelists are going to be exploring the positive economic and community based outcomes that have resulted from partnerships and collaboration based on recovering and redistributing food nationally regionally and locally our panelists each have different roles in food recovery so we have the opportunity to hear varying perspectives that highlight innovative approaches provide insight into collaboration and partnerships and showcase the outcomes they have achieved since embarking on a path toward zero hunger and zero waste high sustainability and community engagement for Kroger based in Cincinnati so for those of you who don't know Kroger we have 2800 supermarkets across the country we're in 35 states and the District of Columbia unfortunately we're not here in Iowa but our closest stores here you may know our bakers in Omaha we also operate 36 food processing facilities and 42 distribution centers that serve our stores so I wanted to talk for just a couple minutes this morning about how Kroger thinks about hunger and food waste and food rescue so 135 years in the grocery business have taught us a few things about people and about food we know that meals matter and that families that share meals together have children who do better in all aspects of their lives and yet there's this fundamental absurdity in our food system that Lee just mentioned which is that we throw 40% of the food we produce away yet one in eight people struggle with hunger and one in six children so we think that's crazy and and so what we are focused on is ending hunger in our communities and eliminating waste across our company by 2025 so a little bit of that is just our simple vision that we believe we can as help solve the hunger problem and solve our waste problem by keeping more food out of landfills and to its highest purpose which is to feed people after all so we do have a plan these are ambitious huge goals they sound crazy they are slightly terrifying but we do have a plan so I'll cover that real quick so one of the first things we're doing is launching a ten million dollar Innovation Fund to help find and finance innovative solutions to our food waste problem we're also committed to accelerate food donations so we're our goals are to reach 1 billion meals by 2020 and 3 billion meals by 2025 which is a pace faster than we're currently on so we have some work to do but not just more food more balanced meals so trying to focus on healthy nutritious foods that will nourish our communities and then we also have committed to be a zero waste company by 2020 and then we added zero food waste by 2025 and part of our commitment is also focused on public policy advocacy so we've committed to be a leader and help lead the way to find solutions and infrastructure where it's needed most and I think one of the biggest points I would make is we can't do it alone we know that so we're working with our partners to help hunger and food waste and those include feeding America we are a founding member of feed America and have worked with them for a long time and then World Wildlife fund's who we've worked with for a long time on things like seafood sustainability so they're one of our key partners too and as well as reef Ed's some of you may be familiar with reef ed who focuses on food waste our ultimate goal is to transform our communities and improve health for millions again big ambitious goals but that's really where we think we need to be and as Kroger we think we can do something about this because we are America's grocer and we have food and we know food so our focus is partly food rescue and getting more food to the people who need it so about 10 years ago we began working with feeding America to develop what is now an industry-leading perishables donation program that we call zero hunger zero waste food rescue and over ten years we've directed or donated 450 million pounds of food from our stores and our manufacturing plants to local food banks and currently we have 99 and a little more percent of our stores participating in food rescue we have a few that aren't but not very many one of the things we've done this year is really rebrand and relaunch our food rescue program to get our associates really emotionally connected to it and tie it to zero hunger zero waste so that they know that when every day when they put food aside for donation they're helping end hunger in their community and keeping food out of the landfill reducing food waste I would mention we started working with World Wildlife Fund early on to map our food waste footprint we didn't really know our numbers at the time and it was really important to us to understand how much we were losing how much food lost there is so we have a bunch of different initiatives to reduce food waste and promote food waste recycling we have a markdown program we're introducing early next year a new branded product line called peculiar pecks which is imperfect produce so we're going to kind of test how our customers respond to buying more imperfect produce we hope and then we also have anaerobic digestion and we do a lot of animal feed and composting programs as well so that's kind of the big picture of what Kroger does I'm looking forward to our discussion [Applause] hi I'm Derrick Nelson and I'm the manager of sustainability for come and go and we started our food rescue journey just a little over eighteen months ago and so for those of you that aren't very familiar with food rescue it's one of those things that you think about it and ultimately for our business it was the right thing to do so to tell our little our story and I've been with come and go a little over two and a half years so one of the first things I did was actually I jumped into a dumpster to understand what our waste was made up of I know it's a glorious aspect of the job but I'm sure a lot of a lot of you don't get to do waste audits very often but one of the things that we found right away is about one five bags of trash that we were producing in our C stores was food waste that was perfectly edible food that could could be put to better use and so one of the misnomers that a lot of our store associates had was can I get sued for donating this as somebody getting sick and that's where food rescue and knowing the laws and regulations is is key and anybody can donate in good faith and they're protected under what's known as the bill Emerson Act so President President Clinton and acted this policy in 1996 and it protects any individual organization from criminal order or civil liability if they donate to a non-profit and good faith so when we looked at this hierarchy of what's the most responsible way of handling food waste this is what the EPA recommends and I'm not going to go through this in great detail but at first you want to eliminate or reduce the amount of food on the on the shelf or what's coming into your store with a see store organization or a convenience store entity like ourselves you've got to have a little bit of product on the sell on the shelf in order to sell it and you can't always predict those impulse purchasers or impulse acquisitions coming in by that consumer so there's a fine balance of what's right from a from a food waste perspective but the the next piece of that puzzle is donating that food to help people and those that need it so we're still early on in that progression and our journey but we're we're making strides so for come and go why are we doing it there's it hits a lot of crossroads and for us it's the right thing to do it aligns with our core values and philanthropic give we we give back 10% of our profits to local organizations and nonprofits every year to help from a charitable and philanthropic give we think it enhances our come and go brand we stand for something that's one of the big things that as our organization continues to evolve we are we want to be a Purpose Driven organization and our mission is actually to make days better and through connecting with people and so we think this also lives up to that that valuing mission as as our organization in the the one big thing for us we have over 5,000 store associates across 11 states and this is a this is an endeavor that actually engages all of our store associates they get bought into the fact that hey we're donating food we're we're doing what's right in our local communities and they're a part of the process and we we engage them in that process and make sure that they help help us do that and then at the end of the day it's also profitable so what what we get on the back end is a pretty nice tax benefit for having a charitable write-off so what's interesting is as an organization we're actually able to take advantage of what President Obama enacted and aligning the tax laws for all organizations and so we're able to actually take advantage of an additional 5% tax charitable write-off due to that that passed in 2016 so what's our program look like these are pictures of marketplace tour for those of you that have been in one of our marketplace tours recently we started this store in 2016 it's if you look at our categories in the c-store space all of them are declining you talk about cigarettes tobacco even fossil fuels that we sell with more fuel-efficient vehicles coming online we're every category that we sell in our C stores is declining so one area that we can do better is an area of offering fresh and healthy food options so if you go into one of our new marketplace stores it has that emphasis it's right there when you come in and so it also produces that food waste and like I said we have that balance that we're trying to achieve this is our process it's a one-pager so going back to is this hard know if you make the process simple and engage everybody in that process so we've got it down to one page and we with associates 5,000 of them across 11 states it's hard to to keep training and make the process easy so that's why you make it make the process easy so it's it's one of those things as long as you continue to educate and formalize that process you can make a difference across that footprint so this is our footprint we operate a little over 400 stores across 11 states everywhere we've launched food rescue has a heart a blue heart that keeps pop populating as we go here we're in 215 stores as of today and we started this journey in January of 2017 so you think about food rescue and the impact that it has we've now just in 2018 alone provided donated more than 1.4 million individual items which at a retail value is over four million dollars worth of food so you can start with one C store and grow it pretty fast with the right partners and eat Greater Des Moines is certainly one of them but that's that's what it's about it's engaging and collaborating with others and that's why we've been successful it's it's it's a community it takes a community it takes organizations it takes people with compassion and caring hearts and if we didn't have that we wouldn't have the success we had and I just want to say thank you to all those organizations so this is those lit this is the list that we are currently working with like Denise have mentioned we look at scaling this on a large scale and feeding America has helped us as well we haven't formalized a partnership with them yet but a majority these organizations are feeding America affiliates and so we're trying to get there and that's that's the biggest thing that takeaway that I hope you all can walk away with is it takes a it takes a family and thank you to all those partners that's with that oh well thank you I am Audrey Alvarez I'm with each Greater Des Moines and I will say it's been a pleasure to one learn from Denise too about how exciting everything that's happening at Kroger and getting to personally work with Derek with come and go so just to see kind of what opportunities there are for us as we kind of work to grow food rescue and recovery within our communities so just as a kind of little heads up so II credit Des Moines we really are a small nonprofit that's focused right here in central Iowa and our work is to really facilitate connections that strengthen our food system and our work is really trying to unite the community through food by making it easy to access quality food so with that when we got started working we went around and talked with various individuals and groups and said you know where are things going really well you know where are things that we can build upon and then where are there gaps where are there opportunities and food rescue and food recovery was one of those areas seen as an opportunity because we had plenty of donors who were wanting to give the excess food that they had they knew that it was still healthy and edible they just didn't know where it could go and how to get it there at the same time we have tons of recipient organizations whether that's a Boys & Girls Club of school of food pantry whichever who could use food but they didn't have the capacity to go and develop all of those relationships so that's really where the work for a greater Des Moines kind of came in is to be that connection piece so kind of like Derek had mentioned really food rescue is just capturing any of that healthy inedible but not sellable food and getting it to an organization that can put it to good use so that's really we had this discussion at dinner last night about I think sometimes when people picture food rescue or any of that you picture what's left on your plate at the end of the meal or you picture someone digging in a dumpster that's not it this is all the perfectly good healthy stuff that wasn't put out yet or those box lunches or those packaged sandwiches that any one of us would eat so it's still really a great quality food it just has to move quickly because we don't have it doesn't have much life left so when we've been working through this so our model has always been to play matchmaker so very similar we just find who has the food
nd how can we connect what them with someone who could use the food so that's been our process for really the last five years we did add a smartphone application called Chow Bay that again was trying to make that process simpler and you know make it easier for a donor and a recipient connect without having to necessarily go through us but really even through all of that there are some challenges that have continued to come up that we are seen within the system so really one of the biggest challenges that we've seen is transportation so there are a lot of groups that could use food but they don't have the capacity to go and get it or they don't have the capacity on a regular basis to go and get that food so that's been leaving a lot of opportunities there on the table equity is another place so when you think about food access and food recovery if it's based on proximity to the donor which is what makes it easier for the donor and the recipient if you're already living in a food desert your equity is lessened right there because there isn't something close so that's really been a challenge we've seen as well among food recipients or food rescue organizations that sometimes just because of just like individuals when there is a concern that you might lose the food you would rather take more than you can use van we can't you know we can only use half of this is there another group that could use the other half so hoarding and ending up with waste is a real issue within even nonprofit organizations where it's very competitive and we have groups that don't want to lose the relationship so they sometimes take more than they need and end up you know tossing some of it and then consistency so again this is a piece even for those that have whether it's a consistency of donation which is great for the recipient partners they know they always are gonna get the same type of food making plan meals about around it but consistency is also great for the donor they know someone's going to be there same time same place you know who they are or what they look like and that's really what helps build those relationships because again like everyone has said the relationships are what keep this moving forward so with those challenges came and opportunities so I don't know if you any of you from the area recognize these little mini coopers kind of tooling around town they're very cute so we have our partner with Wesley Life Meals on Wheels they use these mini coopers every day from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. to deliver food to seniors around the community so those vehicles are only in use from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. so through our partnership with them we thought who that seems like there's some capacity maybe we could use some of that open time to help us with some of this food rescue these challenges that we've been seeing so at the same time we had another opportunity Derek mentioned that come and go was expanding their food recovery program so again they had our partnership with the Food Bank of Iowa they had done a phenomenal job matching as many of the come and go stores in our area as possible to go and pick up through the usual model of the recipient going agency enabled going and picking up that food and taking it back so through that there were about 22 stores that were on more of the outskirts of the community so more of the suburbs so the Waukee Johnston Ankeny just a little too far for any of these recipient partners to go on a regular basis so that's where we tried to put the two together so our initial idea was we were going to use Wesley life so we're paying Wesley life drivers to pick up food from 22 come and goes three days a week every Monday Wednesday Friday and then dropping it off at 15 locations around the Metro so that was our idea and that was what we initially raised money to support and just test it out see how it goes then we actually ran into another challenge again because Food Bank had done such a great job and we have similar partners we actually had a hard time finding places for the food to go so one it they needed to be able to accept it three days a week you know 150 to 200 items so you need to be open at least three days a week and a lot of our regular partners were already getting some of this great food so they didn't need any more so that pushed us to again look out for who else could be a partner and who else is out there so thankfully through our relationship with the Community Foundation I had that conversation to say who are we missing you know we know there's still at least thirty thousand people out there who don't have enough food how do we get food to them and they came up with the great idea of reaching out to JB Conlan with John our common properties who allowed us to do a pilot with them to put food in some of their affordable housing communities so that was new for them you know their property managers this isn't usually their job but they were happy to do it and we were happy to try it out so we did it we kicked it off on April 8th so we had four mini coopers traveling 220 to come and goes and then delivering to 15 locations so we had affordable housing communities but we also have Boys and Girls Clubs school pantries really a mix of anyone that can use food and it's been working so they've provided since April seventy-six thousand meals saved over fifty thousand pounds when we surveyed the clients 60 percent of them have said that they're using this food two to three times a week so it's really filling a gap for them and because of that there were a lot that had been skipping meals so you see sixty-five percent of clients had been skipping meals because they didn't have enough to get through the week and they were skipping meals pretty regularly so that's really the definition of hunger is not only that you skip meals but you skip meals regularly so because of the timing of this program it was over the summer 80% of this was going to children and families so it was really filling a gap and that was something that we were hearing from a lot of our clients when we went and did some surveys with them was just helping full they were that they knew they would always have food available sandwiches salads wraps the chicken strips you know any cut-up fruits and vegetables that was not only delicious but always available and that they could count on it so we were hearing and it was one of those things that was also great to know that we were filling a gap but also still heartbreaking to know that there are so many that we're going days without food and having empty refrigerators so really you know knowing that this food has you know had been going in the dumpster but even though it was still perfectly edible that by providing this partnership so it's a partnership with Wesley life you know with come and go with common properties and all of our recipient partners we've really been able to kind of fill that gap so now our focus is on how do we replicate what we're doing scale it up build it out and expand to additional convenience stores and really look beyond just the convenience store because this transportation piece is a barrier for all of our recipient partners so there's still more that we can do but we're excited that we took this first step to get it going and now we can continue it so now we do we're planning on continuing what we've been doing and growing it from here and we're excited to see that happen thank you [Laughter] so I'm wondering if each and you can provide some advice for a company that wants to get started in food recovery they're not doing anything yet and they really just they don't even know where to begin what would you guys give them just do it they were waiting for me to say that I think that's a good point I think it's it's just get started and maybe start small you know pick something that's a little maybe easier to donate that that you think you can get your arms around and then work with local partners so we in every one of our communities around every store there's maybe different groups that pick up we get pickups about two or three times a week one of the easiest items for us to donate frankly is meat so because we can freeze it so sometimes it's easier to donate something that can be frozen and set aside versus produce or something like hot foods that are a little bit harder to donate but I would say just start with something small I would echo that to some extent when we launched our food rescue program back in January of last year we we sought out a lot of information first and we looked at who's doing this really well and it was actually Kroger's loaf and jug C store chain out in Colorado that we we modeled as our first pilot store and then we contacted partners like Aubrey and we worked with the Food Bank of Iowa very early on in our process but we we leaned on them to help us get going because they had more experience in this space so lean on others and trust that they know what they're doing and then as you learn yourself grow it and expand it I would just like to say to how exciting it is to hear someone say start with meat from the donation side that is not something that I think we have seen that has been my experience in the food rescue space is anyone starting with proteins and that's a huge gap in the system so if you take anything from this today take start with your protein and freeze it because that would go really quickly in the recipient Network so we we also depending on what your organization is and how big you are you may have a food safety team who is all over it and so they are our biggest partners probably when we think about expanding our food rescue program and adding new categories of foods so we have gone to them actually through zero hunger zero waste it's given us a perfect platform to go to our own business units and say hey this is a donation opportunity that we have in produce or in seafood and food safety team we need you to help us figure out a way to say yes and and that has been kind of powerful so they've given us kind of a few tips on what to start from in a few more categories that we haven't traditionally donated and that's been pretty exciting - so are there any barriers that you guys hit or obstacles when you got started that you guys were able to overcame and you can kind of share how you did that I'll take this one out of the gate I guess I think the biggest barrier was people out because there was so app so much apprehension about Oh somebody's gonna get sick somebody's gonna die and it's you take a step back and say okay look at look at the products and look at the process and make sure that that there there's something that could be used or done better with this food we can do something better and I think people are very hesitant to change and so overcoming that change is like take a step back ask the right questions but make sure that people are aware of all of the education I mean the biggest misnomer that we saw was we're gonna get sued well as long as as long as we're doing everything from a food safety standpoint I mean our brand we don't want that tarnishment on come and goes behalf from a food safety standpoint of somebody getting sick so if we're covered from that that liability piece from the Emerson Act what what what downside is there and so that's that's the way we looked at it and the approach we took but yeah it I think people were the biggest hurdle out of the gate ours is a different challenge it's just the sense of competition but within the food rescue space and that was something that I didn't anticipate really when we got started and it's not everywhere but because of limited resources and this viewpoint of scarcity there's always there's sometimes it's perceived as a lack of wanting to collaborate and share and you know that's something that I think II created des moines has really tried to do a lot of as one we don't serve anybody directly we can't use any of this food so if we're successful it's because our organizations have more food and they're doing more of what they need but it's really hard to build a better system if we can't have honest conversations with each other about what's working and what's not working where are we getting food from where are we not getting food from what's going well at those places because I think once we can come together and start to really look at things big picture about how is this working you know what tweaks could we made really we won't be able to do that until we can guarantee because I understand that nobody wants to lose food and we're not in the business of taking food from people so we've really been trying to approach this from the fact where we have to first get more donors in so that we can promise that these organizations will still have what they need to serve their clients but it's it's really hard sometimes just to it seems like it would be simple but it's surprisingly more challenging when you you know everyone's you know feeling like there's just not enough and there's tons there's too much there's plenty of 40% of the food is wasted but if we can just do a better job of capturing it and getting out everyone will have plenty but we have to do a better job and a more efficient job of capturing it and getting it out before that trust will really start to build and then I would add to from our perspective so we are you know a national grocery retailer so our size and scale is also huge and and that brings complications as well we have a big company and a lot of things to work out but the other thing that we do is we support our local food banks and some of what we hear sometimes we looked into milk donations because people said they wanted more milk so we kind of did a deep dive into that area and what we found is a lot of it can be sometimes capacity building at the local not even the food bank so our feeding America food banks typically have a lot of the right equipment to to keep food cold if it needs to be cold but some of our local agencies and pantries and maybe a church they may not have the refrigeration capacity to handle gallons and gallons of milk so some of that you know we've helped with capacity building - and buying equipment or refrigerated trucks to try and get more food to the people who need it and increase you know really our goal is to increase the access and affordability of food in our communities some stores maybe in more remote locations and take longer to transport to where it needs to go so there's there are a lot of big things to figure out sometimes but it can be done it just have to take it one step at a time so each of you kind of hit on collaborating between nonprofits and corporations so can you tell us a little bit about why it's beneficial on both sides and how you guys see the benefits of that - that's the only way any of our work gets done so our entire work is through collaboration and partnership so any of this stuff getting done is done because we have great partners all along the way we have great funders who believe in this work we have great organizations like you know Wesley life and all of our recipient partners who were willing to take a chance on this kind of project and see you know trust us that if we were gonna do what we said we were going to do so I would say the partnerships whether they're with businesses with churches with recipient organizations with growers all of those are valuable and really that communication and being open and honest and you know talking about when things are going well but also being able to say when things aren't going well you know that's been a big part of our especially with this project when we got started we actually had a couple schools that were part of the route and as we got going because of the time of day you know these are all being dropped off from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. school drop-off time was right in the middle and it wasn't working it didn't work but thankfully our partner at that school was able to we have that dialogue to say this isn't working you know we tried to figure something else out and said you know what that's okay we'll find another partner to fill this gap for now and it's not like we're not ever gonna work with you again so you have to be able to you know talk about
what when things are going well but it's most important that you can talk about it when things aren't going well because if no one says anything and all of it just kind of falls apart then everyone's mad then you're it you've got a huge mess so that whole the partnership is being partners who the good and the bad and that's been really the key for all of our work and probably the my favorite part of our work I think for us being a Purpose Driven organization of in the vision of making days better by connecting with people I think food is that connector we can all relate to food if if we sat down at any place to platter food on any one of your tables I think the conversation around what's on that plate can be had and so for us it's food is a connector for us and it aligns with what we want to do philanthropic lis and from it from how we want to be a business in our community we want to be a good community partner and that just aligns with our organizational aspirations so for us it's as long as the nonprofit that we're helping support aligns with what we want to do I think it's it's an easy win-win yeah and I would add to that and just say we've been working in the last two years but especially the last year to really align our philanthropy and giving to our zero hunger zero a social impact plan so in 2017 of the three hundred fifty eight million that we directed to our communities and charitable grants half of that went and hunger into programs that help with food access and affordability so what we're in with our Innovation Fund will do the same thing and that key is to find partners who are doing amazing work already and then support them and what we've learned too is there are a lot of innovators oops in the food waste space too that have great ideas and maybe just need a little funding to get their idea off the ground or to scale it so we're looking for partners too and they may be different partners in different communities who can help us get to our vision of zero hunger zero waste and we're not going to do it alone so we do need our community partners to help us so I know Derek highlighted this a little bit but do you have any idea or scope on how much food has been recovered from your organization or how much you have recovered as a recipient for us just in 2018 I think through September we have we have donated or I guess reduced the amount of waste going to landfills by over two hundred thousand pounds so I think that's a little over 150 thousand meals but we're only so this is through 215 stores we've got over 400 that we still are trying to get to so we're not fully launched yet so that we know the impact can be much greater and every month when we come out with our food waste reports it grows and that's a good thing I guess because it what it was going to the landfill but yeah that's the biggest piece is we try to track it and that's we're still working out some of those systems and processes but we've got like I said we rely on a lot of our partners to help us with that too so you bring up a good point with measurement so one of our key learnings too is is you have to have a person who's managing it so we do have one point person at our corporate office who leads the food rescue program and then she works with people in each one of our retail divisions across the country and she does a monthly report where we talk about you know are we up or down for food rescue for the year this year so far zero hunger zero waste has helped us really be clear about our message and our purpose to feed the human spirit and we've been telling our associates day after day that what they do the decisions they make every day in the stores do help end hunger and reduce waste and so I think it's just an important point that measuring and tracking and knowing your numbers can make a big difference and so even this year we're up 16% in food rescue which is about I think 6 million pounds or 5 million meals above what we did in 2017 so last year we donated whilst they rescue so food rescue was about 91 million pounds from across the company 74 million were from our stores and we do more and in addition to just donations we fund a lot of community partners and we donate a lot of food that isn't a food rescue so there are a lot of other things and we're trying innovative solutions like we have a mobile market in Milwaukee that actually takes food into underserved areas and its food for sale so there are mobile pantries there are mobile markets a lot of really great ideas out there well and we've shared I think so the data and the tracking is obviously really important to us and one of the places that we've struggled the most with because up to this point we've really just relied on our partners sharing what they've been recovering so twice a year we asked our partners to share how much did you recover in the past six months and that's how we get our aggregate numbers that show about 5 million pounds of food were recovered in the last year one of the bonuses and kind of exciting pieces of this trans transition into providing transportation is that allows us to have a little bit better handle on the data and so we are really trying to move in the place of one when we're providing that transportation we can do a better job of not just tracking pounds but also tracking what's being donated so we're really trying to I was just having a conversation with the food bank in the Des Moines area Religious Council about we'd really start like to start to shift the percentage makeup of what's being donated unfortunately right now a lot a lot of what's donated is bread baked goods and sheet cakes and nobody needs that any bread and she cakes every day so we would really like to shift that to having a smaller portion of what's donated being those bread baked items and a larger portion being the produce the protein the perishable items the dairy some of those meal things so that we can start to shift what those donations look like but in order for us to do that we have to do a better job of measuring where we're at right now so once we are able to provide that transportation then we have a much easier probably not easier but easier time tracking some of that so that's why part of the project that we're working on is also working with Polk County their IT department to help with building software that would not only help with just routing efficiency but also the data and the tracking piece that is really important so we're excited that again partnerships smart smart people doing what they do best to help us focus on what we do best no it's always interesting to talk to people outside of the food waste and food recovery industry and sector because they are always amazed at how much food we're wasting and how actually how large the hunger issue is so it becomes a strong component of awareness so from each of your perspectives with what you're doing what are you guys doing to increase awareness within their communities of what you are doing and how you are impacting hunger my head so the whole point of creating a platform like zero hunger zero waste is awareness we've been doing this for a hundred and thirty five years we've been donating food Barney Kroger gave bread to to the neighbor the day-old bread to neighbors even from his first store on the banks of the Ohio River long ago but in and throughout the whole time since then we've been donating food but again not a lot a lot of awareness and so creating a platform like zero hunger zero waste really solidifies what we stand for and who we are as a company and what we're going to do together and that has really raised awareness inside the company with our associates and outside because we used to give a little bit to a little bit of everything and now we're trying to really strategically align our giving and our community service and our corporate social responsibility work to exactly what we want to achieve which is zero hunger zero waste so I think being really clear sometimes a name sounds like a frivolous thing but it can be important because if it really shows what you're trying to do you can bring people along and we've had so many people raise their hand whether its associates customers and shareholders but also our community partners our vendors and suppliers people throughout the supply chain who want to be part of it and it's fantastic I would say education education is at the forefront of our our responsibility as a retailer and as a nonprofit I'm sure people need to understand what the needs in the communities I mean we hear it every day with the partner agencies that we work with and and meg who's somewhere out there she handles the she's my boots on the ground launching these stores but the stories that she comes back with I almost cry almost weekly to hear hear the impacts that it's having in the communities and that's the biggest thing is knowing what those needs are trying to be able to help serve and whatever capacity we that we can but just understanding how can we help build that community to be stronger and meet those needs so I think that's the biggest thing is education and and learning we're always learning and trying new things and growing and that's I think that's the biggest thing for us well I would say we're in the we're actually looking for a name for our food rescue transportation program doesn't roll off the tongue so if any of you have some ideas alright we have a booth right out there and I'd be happy to take them but marketing and communication is one of the challenges as a small nonprofit you know we are a staff of two and my favorite is to do the work so the marketing and communications piece is a challenge and thankfully we have an amazing board we're accepting more you know new board members right now and that's something that I leaned heavily on our board to help us with is you know we've just were going through an update with our logo and you know what can we do to not only raise awareness about a greater Des Moines but they'll work and that's your the biggest piece and the biggest value that we can have is just letting people know that food rescue is happening that there's huge opportunity here and that we want more partners to get involved so that's something that as a small nonprofit with limited resources that is always a challenge is just trying to get the word out not only about you but about the benefits of what's happening collectively you know again a greater Des Moines is the sum of all of our partners and so we want to raise awareness about all the great work that's happening here and in order to do that we need that you know help with some of those marketing and communication things because that's where I'm always happy to come out and I do a lot of presentations and meetings with groups and that's one of my favorite things is just you know talking to groups who've never even heard of food rescue before so getting out in front of them and my book club you know anybody who will listen to food rescue I'll talk to you about it and if you ever invite me to an event and you have food I will ask you what's happening with your leftovers so you can invite me anywhere is we use our data and insights team which is called 84 51 and they have all of our loyalty data all of our shopper card data and so we're working with them to better understand which of our customers really where this message really resonates and which are maybe socially conscious shoppers maybe those who like natural and organics or who care about issues like hunger and see it happening in their community so we're also looking at who this message kind of resonates with so we can communicate with them on a more frequent basis and then we're also working with Xavier University back in Cincinnati on a design thinking study where we're looking at people who are food insecure and those who struggle with hunger and those who actually are food insecure but know how to get stuff done and they know how to work the system and they they have it figured out to try and understand and talk to them personally and individually and say what would really help so what do you use on a regular basis how do you feed your family and what of the thousand solutions out there that we hear about all the time would actually help you because at the end of the day we really want to move the needle and get more food to the people who need it so that we don't have as many people struggling with hunger and going to bed hungry so we're trying to apply some of our learning and our super smart team at 84 51 to help us tackle this challenge - so with our last couple minutes what is the what is the biggest need for your organization right now to achieve where you want to go with your goals that's what our biggest need right now is we have two great projects that are working on scaling up not only the meals-on-wheels pilot but looking beyond and getting larger vehicles so that's gonna take funding to one we need to hire someone who could manage that completely and really expand their relationships and then also you know working at getting more so part of that funding is I would count food we would love to get a few more convenience stores in our area involved in this process so that we can cover that part and then start working on the bigger things I think for us it's probably more partnerships and more relationships because we're still at the midway point of our journey and so we've got a lot of area yet to cover we're not to 99 percent like Kroger but in that and we've kind of chipped away at kind of the low-hanging fruit and so now we're starting to get out to some of those remote locations and for us it's gonna require more partnerships more people that can help us get this food out of the landfill so for us it's more people and more more partnerships for sure so I would say we're actually at this stage now where we're starting to get in there and tackle more of the work so we spent our first year with zero hunger zero waste we just celebrated our one-year anniversary we spent that first year really digging into understanding food loss in our company and did that work with World Wildlife Fund and used the food loss and waste standard to do that the WRI created and that was really informative and it helped highlight where we are doing well and where we have additional donation opportunities and then we are right now going to each of our teams like the produce merchandising team and the meat and seafood team and the dairy team and saying here are the things that we need to work on next so we're trying to tackle new things and add and expand our food rescue to include more categories and more items again in partnership with food safety and then we are also trying to advance the other parts of our zero hunger zero waste plans so we have a lot of work to do it's really exciting though and we're thrilled that so many people want to join us but we do have to really dig in and look at beyond donations what else happens to the food that leaves our store in a perfect world everything we brought in the back of the store would go out the front of the store but it just doesn't always happen that way so our work is going to be and increased donations and then reduce the rest of our food loss so it's not going to landfill unfortunately that's all the time we have so please help me thank our panelists for sharing with us today all right
