Multiplying Impact Through Four Seasons of Food Rescue
In FY25, T2T recovered food from the Iowa City Farmer’s Market every Saturday, delivering 8,600 lbs. of hyperlocal, farm fresh produce to Johnson County neighbors. Long-time T2T volunteer Mary Palmberg has been running the Farmer’s Market route since 2020. Mary is not only a food rescue superhero, but an avid T2T spokesperson as well, educating new market vendors about what we do and how they can become a food donor. Since Mary took the lead, we’ve doubled the number of food donors from the farmer’s market!
Will Keen and Dedi Walker deliver food to Ecumenical Towers, a senior assisted living complex, on their food rescue route every week. But they don’t just drop the food at the door and head to the next stop, Will and Dedi cart it all inside and set it out on tables for residents to easily pick up. Building relationships is a crucial part of our food rescue volunteer role. “They really look forward to it when Table to Table comes, so folks are always waiting while we set up the food for them. We get to know what foods they like best and whenever we get some of that on a route we make sure to save it for them.” – Dedi Walker
The phone rings: a truck driver has a pallet of beef rejected by the customer for having the wrong brand label. Perfectly good food with nowhere to go. Within minutes, T2T is on it. These rescues move fast. Drivers are on a deadline. As staff Gina Hudson says, “It’s always a team effort. It’s unpredictable and even more fast-moving than our day-to-day food rescue routes, and comes together through real-time teamwork.”
In FY25, volunteers gave 11,500 hours to drive routes, glean fields, and move truckloads of food.Together, we turned $699,000 into $8.4 million worth of food.
This content appears in the FY25 Annual Impact Report. View a PDF of the mailed version here.
With a grant from Volunteer Iowa, support from United Way, and a pilot group from MidWestOne, this year we offered group farm harvest opportunities. Gleaning volunteer and MidWestOne Bank’s President & COO Len Devaisher shared, “What a privilege it is to support the powerful work of Table to Table. Gleaning captures the essence of what makes Table to Table so special: nothing wasted, working together so that all of our neighbors have the opportunity to enjoy fresh, quality food.” We can’t send a group of 10 out on a route in a two-seater van, but you can join us in the field! To volunteer, email gleaning@table2table.org
