Since 2011, Food Rescue U.S. has been working to tackle two crises in America: hunger and food waste. It aims to distribute the 40 billion meals estimated to be wasted each year to more than 40 million people who need it. Think of Food Rescue U.S. as a food delivery app, but with volunteers instead of delivery workers. Food Rescue U.S. is powered by an app, and regional volunteers serve as the pipeline, rescuing uneaten food from restaurants, hotels, hospitals, corporate dining facilities and event spaces and shepherding it directly to local social service organizations who feed their communities. It’s been nimble, successful and scalable … until COVID-19. The pandemic has shut down restaurants, canceled events and dried up the food donations Food Rescue U.S. communities rely on. Meanwhile, COVID-19 has only driven up food insecurity, by as much as 30%.

In the latest edition of Voices in Food, Food Rescue U.S. CEO Carol Shattuck and Development and Marketing Director Jennifer Guhl, a team now working apart due to COVID-19 restrictions, talk about pivoting to meet the moment. Because, as Guhl said, “Hunger doesn’t take a holiday.”

Shattuck: Our mission is twofold: to end hunger and food waste in America. We operate at the intersection of both. We make it very simple. We’re direct transfer. We don’t have warehouses; we don’t have trucks. The app is the engine. Food donors can go in and list what food they have — for example, say, every Wednesday, I will have food to donate. Social service organizations go in as organizations who can receive food. Volunteers go in and look at the rescues available on any given day, either as a single rescue or every Wednesday at Trader Joe’s at 9 a.m.

Read the full article about addressing hunger and food waste with Carol Shattuck and Jennifer Guhl at HuffPost.