Bridging Abundance and Need

Photo by Elaine Casap on Unsplash

Early Halloween morning, a Food Recovery Coordinator named Steven and I got in a truck and set off for a Boston area route. I was fortunate to spend the day doing a “ride along” with Spoonfuls, the largest organization in New England to pick up and distribute healthy, fresh food that would otherwise be discarded. Their team delivers recovered food directly to organizations where it can do the most good, addressing hunger while reducing the health, environmental, and economic impacts of food waste.

I’d been a champion of Spoonfuls for years and already knew about the multiple levels of impact they make. By recovering perfectly good food and redirecting it to community programs, Spoonfuls reaches over 63,000 people each week, providing enough for roughly 4.5 million meals a year, and they’ve already recovered more than 5 million pounds of food in 2025. In addition to the human impact, diverting food from landfills has significant environmental benefits and last year they prevented more than 2,700 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere.

Perhaps one of the most impressive things about Spoonfuls is that all food is delivered the same day it’s recovered, so people are getting immediate access to what they need to feed themselves and their families.

It’s one thing to know about their impact and entirely another to experience it firsthand. Beyond the obvious satisfaction of seeing good food get into the hands of people who need it, I spent the day in awe of the multiple levels of connection that make this solution possible.

For the size and scope of their work, Spoonfuls has a relatively small and mighty team of people who navigate countless moving parts and relationships. What seems like a simple equation – get food from locations that have an abundance of it and deliver it to places that need it – is anything but simple.

Getting food on the truck

Forging connections with those who have excess food takes an inordinate amount of relationship building, and even the most enthusiastic partners understand that their teams will have added responsibility. Rather than simply throwing everything in a dumpster, employees need to collect and package food that’s within the appropriate date and quality guidelines, store food at the proper temperatures, and give Spoonfuls access to loading areas so they can transport it in their refrigerated trucks. Even with large brand partnerships, the Spoonfuls team needs to build trust at the store level to ensure everyone’s invested and there’s value on all sides.

And yet, I noticed that every store during my ride along was not only welcoming, but prepared. (We picked up exclusively at grocery stores that day, though Spoonfuls does partner with others, like food distributors and farms.) We shared smiles and jokes with employees, and many said this was the best part of their day. A couple of stores offered bouquets of flowers in addition to the produce, dairy, baked goods, and prepared foods, and I’d realize the importance of this once we arrived at the nonprofit beneficiaries.

Steven and I carefully inspected the boxes to ensure there were no literal bad apples and that all products were in the date range that we could accept. As we loaded box after box onto the truck, he weighed them and kept a detailed inventory of which types of food we received from each store, then mentally noted where he placed those boxes on the truck. After more than half a dozen store pickups, I could only vaguely remember what we had collected, but certainly not the exact contents or location of specific boxes. Steven’s detailed inventory and recollection skills were both crucial for when it came time to deliver food to nonprofits.

Getting food off the truck

It takes an equal amount of work to build relationships with beneficiary partners, and just because an organization needs food doesn’t mean they have the capacity to receive it. Those who receive food need to put in some effort, like ensuring people are available to accept the boxes when the truck is in their area. Spoonfuls works with a multitude of organizations, like homeless shelters, food pantries, schools, and community centers, and some of these locations have staff while others rely on volunteer labor. In all cases, partners have a dedicated contact at each location – someone that Food Recovery Coordinators can call to update on approximate delivery times, for example. (Boston traffic can certainly mess with even the greatest plans!) The logistics of getting food into the hands of organizations across Massachusetts is complex, and Spoonfuls has robust systems that keep their team informed of any delays or projected issues.

At each stop, Steven asked his contacts what they most needed and located the precise boxes that best fit. Some asked if we had specific ingredients while others wondered what we picked up that day and whether they could figure out a way to use it. This back-and-forth conversation helped Steven identify exactly which boxes should go to that partner, and he always kept in mind the stops ahead to ensure we had the right food to deliver to them too.

One of our stops was a weekly dinner program that serves a three-course meal to anyone in need. In addition to asking for things you might expect, like salad ingredients, they wondered if we had any desserts that day. We had two boxes, but Steven only parted with one because he was thinking about organizations further down the route who would also appreciate getting desserts. Spoonfuls’ Food Recovery Coordinators develop this kind of understanding about each partner and make those connections to ensure they can access the types of food they really need.

And remember those flowers that we picked up? This weekly dinner nonprofit was beyond excited to see those on the truck. Part of their mission is to provide meals in a welcoming and dignified way, and having flowers on the tables gives people who are having a difficult time another small thing to smile and feel good about.

At our next stop, Steven asked the homeless shelter’s team if they could do anything with some fine cheeses, and the chef immediately started musing about what he could create. He looked at the box and said, “oh yeah, you’ve given me something similar before and I can definitely figure out a way to use that in a dish.” In addition to providing ingredients the chef needed, we bonded over our shared love of food, and the rest of our unloading time was filled with conversation about all the things you could do with cheese.

Connecting for the long haul

SNAP benefits were set to expire the day after my ride along, and with that looming on the horizon, I wasn’t sure what to expect during our deliveries. I talked with several partners who said they were staying focused on the work they do to serve their communities. Some were thinking about new ways to address the added burden they were expecting – like the weekly dinner nonprofit discussing whether they should add a food pantry to their list of offerings. And despite this level of stress and ambiguity, every person I spoke with said pretty much the same thing: we’re so grateful for this partnership with Spoonfuls and knowing that the trucks are coming helps us breathe a sigh of relief and meet our community’s needs.

Spoonfuls’ doesn’t just forge these partnerships during a crisis. They’ve been successfully doing this work for 15 years with a proven model and can scale their impact because of both longstanding and new relationships. At all levels, Spoonfuls puts connections front and center – connecting different dots to address the issues of food waste and hunger, and forging relationships with people who can contribute to their mission in different ways.

If you feel inspired and have the means, you can support their work. And if you’re not able help financially but still want to do something, you can start by advocating with your elected officials, supporting your local food programs, and staying aware of the ever-changing policies and issues in your community. Check out Spoonfuls’ continually up-to-date Breaking Through the Noise blog to learn more about what’s happening and ways you can take action wherever you are.

No matter what actions you take, large or small, there are always opportunities to address the issues we see around us. In this season of gratitude and thanks, I hope you’ll find ways to connect those dots for yourself and your neighbors. If you feel so inclined, feel free to join the conversation on Substack or drop us a line at hello@theconnectors.net to let me know what you're up to. I always love hearing from you!