Editor’s Note: In 1995, Harald Herrmann helped launch the flagship Yard House, which was bought by Darden Restaurants Inc. where he became president of its Specialty Group (Seasons 52, Capital Grille and others). Herrmann joined Second Harvest Food Bank in 2019 as CEO. For more on the Business Journal’s 2020 Food Issue, see page 1 and 22.
We’ve all done it. We’ve thrown out food from refrigerators at home, at restaurants and at manufacturing facilities. It happens everywhere—many times without a thought about where that food could go to make an impact.
This is a symptom of abundance that reveals a serious ailment: food waste. Today, 40% of food grown or manufactured in the U.S. goes in the garbage, yet millions of people go to bed hungry.
In Orange County, nearly 300,000 people, including one in six children, are affected by hunger.
My mother grew up in war-torn Germany, getting by on meager meals with nearly zero nutritional content. That lens informed my thinking when, as a 17-year-old, I took my very first job as a dishwasher at Marie Callender’s. As I tossed uneaten food into the trash, I had my first insight into the problem of excess food going to waste. I carried this mindset throughout my career as a merchant of food.
I have long mentioned to coworkers that I wanted to support and/or lead a nonprofit, specifically an organization connected to food insecurity and children. This opportunity came at an unexpected time and was one of life’s curveballs. As I learned of the open position at Second Harvest, I immediately knew, “if not now, when?”
A for-profit restaurant company competing for market share inherently develops a different muscle than a nonprofit, from the standpoint of brand self-awareness, business acumen and internal accountability.
Now, my mission is to bridge the hunger gap, and I can’t help but consider how the food industry can unite to address the problem.
Challenges Restaurants Face
In the restaurant industry, there is no question that food waste is a major concern—not just because it impacts our business bottom line, but as it is a vital responsibility to be good stewards of our communities.
The goal for a restaurant is to avoid waste in throughput and capacity. We track food loss and ingredient cost to understand our waste stream. We analyze it to pinpoint efficiencies, attempting to manage yields and expenses to save money. But it is difficult in such a constantly shifting business. We may carefully plan the weekly set up but end up over-ordering a perishable ingredient such as produce.
What can we do?
There are more options besides running a special or throwing it out. We need more people to be more conscious of putting that food to work by placing it in the hands of the people who need it most.
The “good news” is that food waste is also a major concern among top restaurant CEOs, and many support food banks. Some restaurant groups are already operating food rescue programs.
What we need to make sure is that this food waste is top of mind for everyone in the food industry, from grocers and foodservice companies to growers, wholesalers and packers.
Grocery Stores to the Rescue?
We are working to translate our successful grocery rescue program to the restaurant industry. Grocery rescue works like this: As grocers pull food that is nearing its “use by” date from the shelves, Second Harvest and many of our pantry network partners pick it up and distribute it directly to those who need it. Last year, that equaled 15 million pounds of good food that five or 10 years ago would have ended up in the landfill.
In fact, almost half the food Second Harvest provided to those in need last year was from our grocery rescue program.
We must look to this well-oiled grocery rescue machine to provide a blueprint for restaurants to save and send pre-prepared food into the community. We can look to examples such as Chefs to End Hunger as we tackle the challenges of ensuring food safety. We must provide a trusted system to which restaurants can confidently subscribe. Chefs to End Hunger hauls away pre-prepared foods in temperature-controlled trucks to a central facility to be redistributed as a donation.
In Orange County, we can go further by providing wholesalers, grocers and copackers the means to easily make a donation when they have plenty of excess food, but not the labor, time and money to sort through it and put it to use.
The food industry must come together to reduce waste and put rescued, edible food in front of those who need the support.
If there were ever an industry on the front lines of every emergency—a hurricane, a flood, a fire—it’s the food community. When the American Red Cross shows up at the site of a disaster, the food industry comes together as a community, feeding first responders and those who need support.
An inherent servant mindset drives this inclination, especially in the restaurant industry. We want to do good. We want to support the communities that support us. If there is a need, we are there.
We must tap into that servant mindset and realize that food insecurity is a human emergency that is lived out 365 days a year. It doesn’t make the news—it’s not an event. But it is pervasive, living in the shadows of every city every day, even right here. By putting together our industries, businesses and communities, we can put an end to hunger once and for all. Given our blessings of abundance within our food sources—be it store or restaurant—it’s a call to action we must follow.
