Food Forward Inc.

Food Forward fights hunger and prevents food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce, connecting this abundance with people experiencing food insecurity, and inspiring others to do the same. By recovering surplus fruits and vegetables to distribute to nearby hunger relief organizations, our community-based recovery programs educate homeowners, small farmers, and our dedicated corps of volunteers about food insecurity, inspire social consciousness about the local food ecosystem, and promote shared ownership in our mission for change. At the wholesale level, our staff build dock-level relationships with growers and distributors to amplify the business case for integrating produce donations into their business model, funnel built-in surplus to communities in need, and mitigate the climate impacts of landfilled fruits and vegetables. And, with reliable food distributions from Food Forward, our network of hunger relief partners can focus their resources on their clients’ other needs, including job and housing searches, child care, health care, and rehabilitation services. In this way, our food recovery efforts both address immediate needs and support long-term improvements in community wellbeing.

Food Forward’s Community Programs organize thousands of volunteers annually to participate in picks and gleans that recover surplus fruits and vegetables for local hunger relief organizations across LA and Ventura counties. The Backyard Harvest program conducts volunteer-driven picks on more than 600 fruit tree properties annually – from small backyards with a handful of trees to private orchards and large estates. The Farmers Market Recovery program is a market-endorsed donation system for farmers wanting to help fight hunger with their unsold produce; it currently operates in 15 farmers markets and benefits more than 50 local direct service agencies annually.

The Wholesale Recovery program, our largest program by recovery volume, rescues truckloads of surplus fruits and vegetables from the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market and other regional commercial distributors. At our warehouse in Bell, staff arrange pallets of this surplus into mixed truckloads tailored to each agency partners’ capacity and quickly distribute them to our partners to share with the communities they serve.

Food Forward’s produce is delivered to more than 250 hunger relief partner organizations across more than 300 distribution sites annually to provide to their beneficiaries free of charge. Our partners span the social services sector and provide nourishing food boxes, supply after-school snacks, distribute produce through pantries and free markets, and prepare healthy meals for individuals and families across Kern, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties.

Food Forward is the nation’s largest independent, urban-based gleaning organization dedicated exclusively to bringing healthy, fresh produce to communities experiencing food insecurity. The organization spent most of 2022 investing in the systems and staff necessary to make its COVID-era expansion a sustainable endeavor in the long term. We increased the overall capacity of our food distribution hub in Bell, upgraded our data management tools and workflows to help tailor produce pick-ups and streamline communications with our partner organizations, and recruited dozens of volunteer leaders to help rescue and distribute more fresh food than ever before.

Food Forward also remains committed to financial sustainability as its programs continue to grow. The organization has successfully ended with a net positive financial position in each of its 14 years of operation through strong cost management and fundraising efforts. Food Forward’s sustainable income profile includes long-term relationships with foundation supporters, a growing individual giving program, corporate grants and partnerships, fundraisers and special events, and government grants supporting food waste prevention. In recent years, Food Forward has attracted new support from a growing base of institutional and individual supporters, and the Board of Directors is committed to investing in strong fundraising and finance teams.

Since rapidly expanding its programming in 2020 in response to the pandemic, Food Forward has consistently recovered over 60 million pounds of produce in each of the last three years. In 2022 alone, the organization rescued and distributed more than 72 million pounds of fresh produce to its network of hunger relief partners to share with communities experiencing food insecurity. Since 2009, the organization has diverted more than 340 million pounds of fresh, nutritious fresh fruits and vegetables – nearly 2 billion servings – from landfills to its partner organizations and prevented the emissions of over 300,000 metric tons of CO2-equivalent from entering the atmosphere.

In its next stage of growth, Food Forward will accelerate its impact by building new relationships and infrastructure to recover and distribute 270 million pounds of produce in 2023-2025, nearly equal to the volume of fruits and vegetables distributed in its first 14 years. Through this large-scale intervention in the food system, Food Forward will have a transformative effect on how we can address food insecurity, limit food waste and its environmental impact, and build healthier communities.