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The Kansas City nonprofit’s innovative approach is to reduce food waste, fight food insecurity and give families back meal time.
Founded by Tamara Weber in 2019, Pete’s Garden partners with caterers, restaurants and food service organizations to preserve ready-to-eat foods that aren’t served.
Weber and a team of volunteers package the food into small, ready-to-eat meals. These healthy meals are delivered to social welfare organizations and distributed to families in need three days a week.
“This is a food that is perfectly edible and delicious,” said Weber. “It’s often prepared in bulk by caterers and foodservice operators serving many people at once. There was no easy and safe way to deliver.”
Weber deliberately chose to focus on cooked meals such as meat, protein, vegetables, and other side dishes for several reasons.
First, because food pantries already offer breads, packaged goods, desserts, and produce. Secondly, her ultimate goal is for her family to enjoy mealtime together.
“For me, food collection is just a means to an end and the ultimate goal is to actually enable mealtime for my family,” says Weber. “I grew up in a family where we ate together every day. Now that I think about it, it’s almost weird.
“The idea for me is for Pete’s Garden to make it easy for other families, especially single mothers and working parents, to take meals home and have family meal time,” she added.
By her own admission, Weber never intended to start a nonprofit. But when she wrote The Story of Food Waste with her daughter as part of her school project, Anthony Bourdain’s documentary Wasted! felt.
“This documentary was really eye-opening because I didn’t know how big a problem it had on the environment, and how much food was wasted. ‘ said Weber.
Statistics from the Pete’s Garden website show that U.S. restaurants throw away more than $25 billion in food each year, and only 20% donate surplus food that isn’t served.
In Kansas City alone, restaurants can serve up to a million meals, and 1 in 6 children are food insecure.
“I just thought, ‘Well, this is a problem that looks like it’s just a matter of getting it from people who have excess food to people who need it.’
Weber initially researched organizations she and her daughter could volunteer with, but soon realized the local gap was bigger than she had imagined.
“I am surprised that no one is doing anything to address Kansas City’s food waste problem,” Weber wrote in a March 2020 LinkedIn post. [2019] I woke up early and knew that “someone” was me. ”
Shortly after, Weber quit his job at Hallmark and began strategically planning ways to minimize food waste in Kansas City.
By August, she pitched her concept to Operation Breakthrough. There was so much interest in this that Pete’s Garden immediately partnered with the organization and began handing out meals to her family in November.
“It was obvious that this would work,” says Weber. “There was food available and it wasn’t too difficult to repackage it. Working with organizations like Operation Breakthrough, families were picking up their children right there. I should have prepared a meal for you when you came.”
rooted in family
In many ways, Weber’s desire to collect food waste and facilitate family mealtimes can be traced back to her own upbringing growing up outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
“I grew up in a family where food was really important. We didn’t waste food. We used it as a way to keep our family together,” says Weber.
Weber said her father, Pete Slack, liked to grow produce in his backyard garden for the family to eat and share with neighbors.
“Our family’s meals used vegetables from my father’s garden almost every day, so it seemed only natural to name the organization Pete’s Garden in honor of his achievements. ‘ said Weber.
Her father was a factory worker who hadn’t finished high school, so the family didn’t have much money. I feel.
“I now have the means and means to be able to do something with my education, skills, and resources that I can give back to other families in my community,” she said.
In 2022, Pete’s Garden will distribute 65,000 meals to Kansas City families and could “easily” increase to 125,000 by 2023, Weber said.
no more wasted time
Part of that projected growth is the result of Pete’s garden moving into the larger kitchen of the Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral. This organization had previously shared space in Operation Breakthrough.
The new location should allow Pete’s Garden to add more food providers, Weber said.
Partner organizations must work in health department-inspected kitchens and commit to donating at least 40 pounds of food a week, but Weber says he works with smaller organizations to distribute surplus food elsewhere. We added that we would be happy to help redirect you to.
“I don’t want Kansas City’s delicious prepared food to go to waste,” she said.
Weber said she can envision future programs that use surplus ingredients where she and volunteers cook meals in-house, but she wants to stay focused on the “core” of the mission for now.
Weber said as Pete’s Garden has grown, so has the need for volunteers to package meals every Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“I think we all have things we can do to make things better,” said Weber. “Instead of sitting and complaining that this is not working and that is not working, do something. ,That is wonderful.”
This article originally appeared on Startland News, a member of the KC Media Collective.
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