From restaurants to the mouths of the hungry

Food has been on my mind lately. Wait, who am I kidding? Food is always on my mind. I love cooking. I love eating. I sometimes wonder if one day I'll open my own cafe.. The walls would be red with white wainscoting, I'd wear a blue apron, we'd have weekly dishes featuring locally grown produce... and we would donate any leftover food at the end of the day to local food pantries.

That's right - many restaurants wrap up their leftovers at the end of the night and prepare them for pick-up the following day by trucks from local pantries. The food is then served to hungry people. It's like a doggy bag - on a larger scale. I myself love leftovers.. and hopefully those who receive these donations love them too.

How does it work? The local pantries actually do most of the work and foot most of the cost of the food pick-up. At least this is the case with the Greater Boston Food Bank, which gives out leftover containers to all participating restaurants and then sends trucks out daily to pick up the food.

It will be interesting to see what impact the increasing price of gas (and food!) has on these donations. May they'll start sending bike couriers around to pick up the leftovers. Or maybe restaurants will stop having so many leftovers and either start using them in the next day's dishes, or making less food overall.

If you're interested in donating food as a restaurant, check out the GBFB's restaurant donation FAQ. If you're an individual interested in donating to a food pantry, look at this list of Boston pantries.

Related Posts: Food Prices are Rising; Food for Thought; Increasing Food Costs: A New Model; Help Burma by Eating

Photo of volunteer collecting food courtesy of Photo Mate Kitt.