Get Ready to Launch New Web App

CFR's new Web app. will make it easier for food donors to find hunger relief organizations.

Get Ready! This summer, restaurants, grocers, farmers, caterers, and other food businesses with surplus food to donate will be able to easily find hunger relief organizations that will gladly receive donated food. CFR's new Web application will make it easier for food donors to find hunger relief organizations.

Community Food Rescue will launch its free automated Web app., called Chow Match, powered by the Peninsula Food Runners, a non-profit food recovery organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It's the Uber of food recovery. 

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Calling for Volunteers! Become a CFR Food Runner

Sign up to be a volunteer food runner to transport food from food businesses to hunger relief organizations

Community Food Rescue will only succeed and scale up if we have volunteers who can transport food from food donors to food recipient organizations. We seek people with vehicles, good driving records, and a few extra hours to join our volunteer food runner corps.

It's easy to use our new, Web application matching software, 

 Once you register and complete a profile listing your availability and preferred location, you will be sent emails or texts when food runs are needed. The first person to accept the run, gets to fulfill the run. 

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Do Your Food Venues Donate Food? Look for the Green Sticker

by: Cam Pascual, Food Recovery Network

Community Food Rescue joins Food Recovery Certified to celebrate businesses that donate their unsold food. Look for this sticker

 Have you ever wondered about what your favorite restaurant, farmer, grocer, or caterer does with their leftover food? Some donate it to those in need. Most send it to landfills.

Food Recovery Certified (FRC) is the nation's first and only food recovery certification that differentiates and recognizes food businesses that donate their surplus food from those that don't. To date we've certified 53 food businesses in 20 states. We haven't certified any businesses in Maryland yet, but we anticipate that will change very soon.

Food Recovery Certified provides third party certification to food businesses that donate their unsold food. We're excited to partner with Community Food Rescue (CFR), our first countywide effort to certify businesses that donate food in Montgomery County.

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How Do You Know it's Safe to Eat?

How do you know whether food that is past the date on a label  is safe to eat? Some people throw out all food that is past the date on the package. Grocers discard tons of food that is near expiration. But what do those dates actually mean? Food manufacturers date food according to optimum quality, not food safety. Most items are perfectly fine to eat well after the package date. But how can you tell?

Community Food Rescue's new, Food Safety Information brochure, gives you practical tips on just what package dates mean so you can tell the difference between, "packed on," "sell by," and "use by" dating. The free brochure gives examples of the actual shelf life of the most common foods after the date stamped on the package. There are also safe food handling tips about storage, thawing, and cooking. Available from CFR in seven languages.

The brochure is especially helpful to our hunger relief organizations' clients, who may receive rescued food.

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Food Recovery In Action:

Feeding those who are Homeless

by: Giuliana Sciuto, Montgomery County Food Council

MCCH relies on donated prepared meals to feed their clients

As the development and meal coordinator for the Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless (MCCH), Naira Hirz, can tell you firsthand how much food is needed to feed the hungry people at their facility daily. She stresses the need for food, especially in the men's shelter which doesn't have a kitchen and therefore relies on volunteers to bring in cooked meals. Otherwise MCCH must spend limited funding to feed the 80 to 200 people living in their facilities on any given day.

Naira is an active member of the Food Recovery Working Group (FRWG), one of five working groups of the Montgomery County Food Council. The FRWG advises on the development and implementation of Community Food Rescue, a new system that Naira points to as a huge help to our community to redistribute rescued food to those who need it most. Read More 

Sweetlife Festival Goes Green with Food Recovery

Sweetlife Festival 2015 donates 3,600 lbs. of surplus food

Sweetlife music festivals celebrate both good food and good music. Now in its sixth year, not only did this year's two day May event at the Merriweather Post Pavillion bring 25 musical artists together with 36 local food vendors selling delicious, healthy food, and 22,000 people, but the sponsors also invited Community Food Rescue to recover surplus food.

Community Food Rescue partners, Manna Food Center and Rainbow Community Development Center picked up an amazing array of food for their clients-3,623 lbs. of surplus food. Pat Drumming, Executive Director of Rainbow Community Development Center picked up food on the last night of the concert. Pat reported that, "217 of our food-insecure clients received this food. We also shared 650 pounds with Adventist Community Services and 480 pounds with Heritage House. Heritage House served 70 seniors with the food they received." Read More