Large-scale warehouse donations increase variety

Currently each week, T2T picks up thousands of pounds of surplus food from local warehouses, UNFI and US Foods. Now accounting for 31% of the food we rescue, this food isn’t even short-dated and serves as a source for more organic, gluten-free, and vegetarian foods.

Getting this program up and running didn’t happen on its own. Picking food up at this scale would require several trips in our smaller transit vans, so in the early days, John’s Crane let T2T use a 16-ft. truck weekly for free. When T2T outgrew that truck, we moved to renting a large truck twice a week to pick up warehouse donations.

In 2017, staff David Wellendorf and Emily Meister developed a partnership and with a significant donation from Frontier Natural Products were able to lease a dedicated 22-ft. refrigerated truck. Since then, this truck has made more than 350 trips transporting nearly three million pounds of food.