One Million Meals and Counting: Saving Grace Perishable Food Rescue Reaches Milestone

One million pounds of excess perishable food rescued and delivered to feed those in need. It’s a milestone Saving Grace Perishable Food Rescue (savinggracefoodrescue.org) reached in late July – just 34 months after the nonprofit agency began operations. The one million pound mark was reached a month earlier than anticipated, thanks to large donations this summer.

Saving Grace provides a pipeline that connects excess perishable food that would otherwise go to waste with nonprofit agencies that feed the hungry. The organization’s efforts also keep thousands of pounds of food a month out of the landfills. Each weekday morning, Saving Grace’s two professional food handlers drive refrigerated trucks on scheduled and on-call stops to pick up excess perishable food from a network of 30 regular donors. It’s delivered the same day – free of charge – to a network of 20 local nonprofits that serve low-income families in the Omaha area.

Trader Joe’s is one of Saving Grace’s earliest and largest donors. Since February 2014, the grocer has donated more than 185,000 pounds of excess perishable food through Saving Grace. Other major donors over the past three years are Greenberg Fruit (160,000 pounds), Hy-Vee #9 at 180th and Q (129,000 pounds) and Atkin’s Natural Food Store (112,000 pounds).

A list of all of Saving Grace’s 30 food donors and 20 partner nonprofit agencies is available at savinggracefoodrescue.org.