Cultivate Food Rescue

Key Goals for 2021:

Deliver 1,000 backpacks of meals to schoolchildren every week

Pilot and expand support network to tri-county food pantries

Train local high school students for promising culinary careers

To reach our goal of distributing backpack program meals to 1000 students a week, we are recruiting additional school districts in St. Joseph, Elkhart, and Marshall counties in northern Indiana.
We have hired a food procurement specialist in order to streamline our rescue and redistribution process and to build solid relationships with community food donors, food pantry administrators, and potential wholesale distributors which we may utilize to purchase perishable food items in bulk for distribution to the pantry network.
We are in the midst of having a custom software system developed which will allow us to quickly list our available products, for the pantry administrators to place orders, and streamline the redistribution process, resulting in a more efficient and timely turn around process.
We are always recruiting new food donors, be that institutions of higher education. caterers, restaurants, grocery store, food retailers, and food distributors in order to increase the pounds of food that we can rescue and reduce the food waste that takes place in our three-county area.

Cultivate Food Rescue has grown exponentially in 2020. The food resources available to us and the community members' need for food increased tremendously with the start of the pandemic. We have been growing and expanding our reach so much that we moved into a much bigger, new building in January of 2020 and had to double the size of our freezer space by July. We have two refrigerated vehicles, a box truck, and a sprinter van that are used for food donation rescue and distribution to the schools and food pantries that we partner within our community. In 2020 we have added 3 new staff members to meet our organization's needs and the potential for further growth is continuing to be seen. We have the financial support of the Community Foundations and United Ways in all three counties where our programs are being implemented and our corporate, organizational, and individual donor base is growing as well.
We could not do what we do without the hundreds of volunteers who give of their time, talent and treasure to make sure our mission is successful. We have over 100 volunteers a week in our facility, prepping food, cooking, packaging meals, and preparing the meals and bulk food for distribution. We are proud to call all of the volunteers who give selflessly to our mission part of the Cultivate Food Rescue Family!

We are currently distributing 850 backpacks weekly in 26 schools. That is 5100 meals a week.
In 2020 alone we rescued over 818,000 pounds of food, distributed over 178,000 frozen meals to students, veterans, seniors, community centers, and food pantries. Our bulk food redistribution to food pantries and community service organizations totaled over 722,000 pounds.
In January of 2021, we reached a milestone, one million pounds of food recovered since our inception.
As we become a foundation of environmental sustainability in the community and as the numbers of our beneficiaries grow every week, our potential to grow as a strong nonprofit that addresses food waste and food insecurity in northern Indiana grows as well. We are looking forward to 2021 and the transformations we can be instrumental in bringing about by reducing food waste and increasing food security in our community.