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Box 7.5 Solving Food Waste and Feeding the Hungry: Feeding America
and Starbucks
The concept of food banking was developed by John van Hengel in Phoenix,
AZ, in the late 1960s. Van Hengel, a retired businessman, had been volunteering at a soup kitchen trying to find food to serve the hungry. Van Hengel
established St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix, AZ, as the nation’s first food
bank. In its initial year, van Hengel and his team of volunteers distributed
275,000 pounds of food to people in need. Word of the food bank’s success
quickly spread, and states began to take note. By 1977, food banks had been
established in 18 cities across the country. Today Feeding America is comprised of over 200 regional food banks that feed over 46 million people in the
United States, making it the largest hunger relief agency in the United States.
What started as a small, single store in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market,
Starbucks Company has grown into a global leader with 24,000 stores in 70
countries. Starbuck’s mission is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one
person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.” Howard Shultz, the CEO of
Starbucks believes that an economic mission must be balanced with a strong
social mission as well. “As a business leader, my quest has never been just
about winning or making money. It has also been about building a great,
enduring company, which has always meant striking a balance between profit
and social conscience.”
In addition to its coffee and tea products, Starbuck locations sell ready-toeat foods from their refrigerated counters. Many of these foods are made daily
and packaged for a grab and go format. However, at the end of the day, any
prepared food that had not sold had to be discarded to maintain the high quality and freshness that Starbucks wanted. Starbucks decided to start a program
to donate its ready-to-eat prepared meals from each of its Starbucks stores in
the United States to local foodbanks and hunger relief agencies. To be able to
scale this effort across the nation, Starbucks decided to work with Feeding
America to coordinate nightly pickups of prepared foods and distribute it to
the food banks and relief agencies that were working with Feeding America.
The Starbucks FoodShare™ program provides over five million meals to
families and individuals served by the Feeding America network. As the program is rolled out to all the company-operated Starbucks stores, the goal is to
provide as much as 50 million meals by 2021.
The challenge with the initiative was the coordination of nightly pickups at
over 7600 stores and the goal to be in and out of each store in 5 minutes so as
not to disrupt the store operations. This required the coordination of hundreds
of local food pantries to pick up the packaged foods in refrigerated trucks
each day. This allowed the food pantries to pick up sandwiches and other
prepared foods nightly and have them ready to be distributed to customers the
following morning.
(continued)
7 Innovation and the Quest to Feed the World
Box 7.5 Solving Food Waste and Feeding the Hungry: Feeding America
and Starbucks
The concept of food banking was developed by John van Hengel in Phoenix,
AZ, in the late 1960s. Van Hengel, a retired businessman, had been volunteering at a soup kitchen trying to find food to serve the hungry. Van Hengel
established St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix, AZ, as the nation’s first food
bank. In its initial year, van Hengel and his team of volunteers distributed
275,000 pounds of food to people in need. Word of the food bank’s success
quickly spread, and states began to take note. By 1977, food banks had been
established in 18 cities across the country. Today Feeding America is comprised of over 200 regional food banks that feed over 46 million people in the
United States, making it the largest hunger relief agency in the United States.
What started as a small, single store in Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market,
Starbucks Company has grown into a global leader with 24,000 stores in 70
countries. Starbuck’s mission is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one
person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.” Howard Shultz, the CEO of
Starbucks believes that an economic mission must be balanced with a strong
social mission as well. “As a business leader, my quest has never been just
about winning or making money. It has also been about building a great,
enduring company, which has always meant striking a balance between profit
and social conscience.”
In addition to its coffee and tea products, Starbuck locations sell ready-toeat foods from their refrigerated counters. Many of these foods are made daily
and packaged for a grab and go format. However, at the end of the day, any
prepared food that had not sold had to be discarded to maintain the high quality and freshness that Starbucks wanted. Starbucks decided to start a program
to donate its ready-to-eat prepared meals from each of its Starbucks stores in
the United States to local foodbanks and hunger relief agencies. To be able to
scale this effort across the nation, Starbucks decided to work with Feeding
America to coordinate nightly pickups of prepared foods and distribute it to
the food banks and relief agencies that were working with Feeding America.
The Starbucks FoodShare™ program provides over five million meals to
families and individuals served by the Feeding America network. As the program is rolled out to all the company-operated Starbucks stores, the goal is to
provide as much as 50 million meals by 2021.
The challenge with the initiative was the coordination of nightly pickups at
over 7600 stores and the goal to be in and out of each store in 5 minutes so as
not to disrupt the store operations. This required the coordination of hundreds
of local food pantries to pick up the packaged foods in refrigerated trucks
each day. This allowed the food pantries to pick up sandwiches and other
prepared foods nightly and have them ready to be distributed to customers the
following morning.
(continued)
7 Innovation and the Quest to Feed the World