WHAT INSPIRED US
to start 
Dedication:
This page is dedicated to my love, Raymond who inspires me to be all that I can be in always striving for my full potential in growth, helping others, and in following my true and ideal path. Your daily actions define for me the truest meaning of making a difference in people's lives, and broadens my understanding of what it means to serve by conserving. You teach me what it truly means to be an angel in this world and I love you with all my heart, forever and ever Raymond!
Our Story:
When I was a kid, my
grandma had a motto when it came to food: “It’s
better to have too much than not enough.”
Although our family was struggling just to get by, my grandma saw to
it that any holiday meal was nothing short of a smorgasbord of homemade
goodies. In other words, no one went
home hungry, and everyone took home leftovers.
The only problem was that there was always more leftover food than we
could eat. Waste.
As I grew a little
older, I learned that my dad bought all sorts of fruits and veggies at our
local Swap Meets on the weekends. I can
recall my dad telling me on several occasions: ‘It doesn’t matter if we can’t eat all of this,’ he would say. ‘What’s
important, is that we always have these kinds of
things in the house. This is stuff is so
cheap, we can just toss what we can’t finish.’
More waste.
Even though we were
poor, I was raised to believe that it was okay to throw away food, but
somewhere along the line, something started to happen to me inside. I began to feel guilty and sad whenever I
would throw food away. Outside of my
family, I started to realize through television commercials, food drives in
stores and at school, and from teachers, that our world is riddled with
suffering due to a lack of resources (or should I say, displaced resources) that I took for granted on a daily basis.
I began to learn
that there were people out there a whole heck of a lot poorer than I was. While I was worrying about things like not
being able to go to an amusement park, or not having the funds to be able to
play CLUB soccer, or where I had to buy my clothes from, or that we seemed to
eat the same things for dinner a lot, or dreading my next eye-doctor
appointment, most other people on our planet had more important needs that
weren’t getting met. Most other people
in our world can’t afford to go to any kinds of doctors, and many get sick and
die because they can’t get the help they need.
Many people would consider it a luxury to eat many of the same things
all of the time. Many people are not
just hungry and malnourished, but they are starving. I began to learn that when it came down to
getting my physical needs met, I had things pretty good, really good!
These hard facts
were starting to settle into my bones as I reached adolescence. As a teenager, I began to help my grandma
with things like housework and running errands for her. Cleaning her refrigerator and freezer, and
buying her groceries were among some of the things I would help her with. I remember never quite being able to
understand why she consistently just couldn’t manage to eat a lot of the food
she would store. Oftentimes, she would
have me buy her various food products “just
in case” she would happen to be in the mood for them. Many of these items were barely eaten or
unopened by the time the expiration date arrived. She would tell me that she felt so guilty
about all of the expired store-bought or her homemade leftover food that she
never finished, and that she couldn’t bear throwing these things away
herself. “I’m so wasteful!” she would say. Then
she would have me throw these foods away for her. As I entered adulthood, I would visit her so
often that it actually became part of my routine when I would drop by to see
her to quickly search and throw away the bad food in her kitchen!
At age 16, I left my
dad’s company and began to work at Starbucks.
I was very pleased to see that they donated almost all of their food
products and coffee before they would go bad.
By the time I was 17, I was working in the restaurant business. It wasn’t long before I realized that most
food establishments don’t donate their unused food like many Starbucks
locations do-they throw it away! For
anyone who needs a little inspiration to conserve or help to feed others, I
recommend for them to work in a restaurant for a little while. I think that most people would be shocked to
see just how much food gets thrown away in the course of a day at most
restaurants. There were a few times when
I asked some of the managers at the different restaurants of which I have been
employed if there was a way to get this food to people who needed it, but they all replied similarly. I learned
that not even the employees were allowed to take home the food due to liability
issues, and that was why I wasn’t permitted to make the arrangements needed to
give it to those who were poor or hungry.
I was also told that even if those arrangements could be made, ‘it would be
more trouble than it’s worth.’
A few years after
leaving the food industry, I met my Soulmate & Eternal Love Raymond, who is the most
loving, caring and generous individual I have ever known. One day, we had a conversation that I would
consider to be the straw that finally broke this camel’s back. Somehow, we started discussing how tragic it is that there are so many people starving in the world and
yet there is more than enough food to feed them, even if only with all of the
perfectly safe food that is simply thrown in the trash and wasted every day alone! After
talking about my experiences with food waste in the restaurant business, we had
a realization that has since changed both of our career paths for good. We came to the conclusion that there are so
many restaurants and grocery stores throwing food away on a daily basis, that
if we could just take this food off of as many of their hands as we possibly could before it gets to the trash,
we could help improve the lives of so many!
The more help we can get, the more food we can prevent from being wasted and thus direct it to those who need it most. It’s that simple!!!
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