Our Objectives
1. Create pathways for restaurants to reallocate food that would otherwise go to waste
2. Provide food banks and homeless shelters with a consistent flow of food to combat food insecurity and help feed the millions of Americans that go hungry each day
3. Mobilize a network of conscientious individuals who desire opportunities to impact food insecurity in their communities
About Us
Who Are We?
The Food Saver Project is an initiative that fights food insecurity by conserving extra restaurant food that would otherwise go to waste, and transporting it to homeless shelters and food banks where it can be served to people in need.
About the Founder
I was born and raised in the Greater Seattle Area, so visiting Seattle has always been a regular occurrence for me. Between looking at cherry blossoms to attending summer camps, I have spent countless hours roaming the city streets. I have so many memories of driving with my parents, looking out the window to see hills covered in thin blankets or small tents with people living inside them. Hundreds of people live on the streets of Seattle, sleeping in the freezing cold weather with little to no shelter, every day. Every time it snowed, I would think about how lucky I was to have a warm house to stay in. I’ve always done whatever I could to help those experiencing homelessness, but this only ever amounted to giving individuals food or small amounts of money.
Last year, while working as a Youth Advocate with Indian-American Community Services and researching climate change and its impacts on homelessness, I learned two facts that really stood out to me:
1 - Seattle is the city with the third-highest unhoused population in the country.
2 - Decreased crop yield from climate change has drastically increased the food insecurity faced by those experiencing homelessness.
After reading an article about the sheer amount of food that goes to waste in the restaurant industry, I decided that I wanted to do more. I wanted to help my community more than just one person at a time. Learning more about both of these issues at the same time gave me the idea to start the Food Saver Project. If I could successfully facilitate the transfer of excess, otherwise wasted food from restaurants to the food banks and homeless shelters that need them, both problems would be addressed. Moving forward, my goal is to make the process sustainable via an app that allows anyone to volunteer to pick up and deliver the food to wherever it is needed the most, empowering anyone to fight for the cause and allowing for easy implementation in other regions.