Nearly 128,000 tons of food waste was generated in 2024… in Minneapolis alone.

Loaves & Fishes, at the end of the day, is intended to remove the barriers and aspects of the world that make people feel less than human when they show up for resources. Our mission is to destroy that stigma of what a soup kitchen is or what food access looks like, and create a system that is dynamic enough that if someone was a millionaire and the next day they’re not, they would be comfortable going to get it. Or someone who’s lost everything, no matter what the reason was, their fault or not, they would be comfortable to go get it.

Food Rescue is rescuing food from a landfill, but it’s much more sophisticated than that. We follow the food from every single stop that it has. We start with the farmers and agriculture, and when that food leaves and goes to distributors, manufacturers, and packagers, we follow it there and have the opportunity to rescue it before it goes to retail. Labels can change, colors can change, warehouses can do creative things, hit a pallet jack, damage a box. All different scenarios where the food inside the casing is still good but is no longer suitable for retail. We teach our volunteers in our kitchens to prep that, maybe 1/8 of the apple is a little bit bruised, or the green pepper’s damaged, or whatever the scenario is. You take that one green pepper and prep it times 10,000 different times, and you’ve still saved quite a bit of food.

The ability to have drivers that are dedicated, we try to send our drivers to the same areas, on the same days to the same partners because they create relationships with the people working at an organization, which creates seamless transactions. You know, things are missed, the wrong things are taken, you know, those kinds of scenarios.

One of our warehouses is fully under inventory, meaning everything that comes in is allocated to an inventory system around the idea that we are trying to create as robust of a selection as possible for people to create menus. So we bring it in, we categorize it, inventory it, stage it, and then put it in the warehouse. Then our site coordinators or the community partners can show up in the warehouse after placing an order. The highly perishable items, the produce, the grains, and the dairy, we learned quickly that they are quite cumbersome to inventory. We were quite literally putting an apple in and taking it right back out.

“So I go to the warehouse, and then we also have deliveries from the warehouse that come here to the Commissary Kitchen, and then we prep it. We cook all the products that need to be cooked and then we also cut all the produce here, and then we send it out to sites. We have two employees, that is Chad and me, and oh, I’m sorry, and Margarita as well.” —Rebecca

Since the pandemic, we brought up the Commissary Kitchens to take some of the burdens off Site Coordinators. When our meal counts went up through the roof and our volunteer count was very sparse because of the pandemic, we had to find a solution that worked. The Commissary Kitchens allowed us to not only take the products we wanted, but to make sure the pandemic didn’t affect the brand or the menu items we were providing.

“Right now, I am prepping some black plums and some red plums. This is something I got from the warehouse and this is what I really love about it, I can go and just get fresh produce like this. I am prepping a fruit for the Salvation Army.” —Rebecca

“We are kinda like a walk-in drive-through. I love this site because I relate to most of my guests. I have a similar past, a similar history. And I remember coming to churches where they would hand out food, and it made me feel human. It made me feel seen, and I want to give that feeling away, I want to give it back. Because that’s all I needed to get to where I am at today: to know that people see me, people hear me. 

Right now we are at Salvation Army Temple on Lake Street. I pick it up from Commissary Kitchen, then I bring it here, put it in the oven, and prep it for volunteers.” —Alyssa

Community Distribution exists because we found that our guests were experiencing barriers that were greater than just getting them to our meal sites. We started hearing all these scenarios of people needing food that were desperately in need, and we didn’t know how to change that at our meal sites. All we learned is that this need is real, and it’s not really navigable by a delivery system. So what we did is we set up Community Distributions where our guests could come with one to six families.

“Loaves & Fishes was a brand-new idea to our family. We had never been a part of a meal program before, but I said, “Well, let me find out more information,” and I looked on the website, and it was open to any family regardless of income. And so I said, “Let’s give this a try.”

“And your name please?” “Yes, it’s Sarah Sutman.” “And so we went for the first time, loaded the kids in the car, and drove through the line, and immediately I felt just so much joy.”

To see the amount of people that come out to serve every week and give back.” —Sarah

“So we get people that sign up for half-hour slots to drive through, and all these awesome volunteers load up their cars for an appropriate amount for however many households they signed up for.” —Lisa

Street Outreach was born back with the bread at a shop when I was looking for different jobs. But what we learned way back then with the individual sandwiches was where the different communities show up that are looking for these foods consistently all year round in Minnesota. And we wanted to make sure that while we were bringing food down, it was suitable and meant for the individuals we were bringing it to. For example, the Minneapolis airport, the sandwiches can only be sitting out for 18 hours, so the shelf life on them is great, and it’s all fast casual food. That food quite literally goes to Street Outreach throughout the days. At the end of the day, our drivers are leaving the warehouses with packages and boxes, and they are making drop-offs. Sandwiches made on Monday are getting delivered, so these communities are being served in the background all throughout the week as we get these foods. We’re not bringing number ten cans to people that are living in tents, and we aren’t bringing fast casual stuff to people who have made it to affordable housing or are looking for more sustainable solutions throughout the week. So, a very intentional use of Food Rescue.

This organization is run by 50+ staff that are here day in and day out, that have the same dedication and show up for the exact same reasons that I do. All that takes money, but it gets bigger than that. It requires people to partner with us, all the donor partners that we have, the rescue partners that we have, the vendors. Everyone we show up with knows we are a nonprofit and does their part to try and make this work. We have partnerships all across Minnesota. 

Loaves & Fishes has a legacy of people serving people, is what it comes down to. People who care enough for someone else and want them to have food access. We are a nonprofit that is very aware of where our dollars go. We want to make sure that most of our dollars, the majority, 98% or more of our dollars, go to actually serving our guests. We’re not all millionaires. We are showing up because it’s mission. We show up here because it’s an adventure. Yeah, we have bills to pay, but so do so many other people. So we’re here today to hopefully have a cost of living that is fair, that we can continue to advance individuals on. 

Loaves & Fishes shows up every single day in areas where food access may not be available. Loaves & Fishes shows up in areas where other organizations might have been told no or may not have the wherewithal, or the logistics, or the ability to do it consistently. We’ve scaled to a point where we need your money to stay at this level so we can continue filling in the unique gap that Loaves & Fishes shows up for in Minnesota.

Make a donation today: https://www.loavesandfishesmn.org/way…

This video was narrated by the Loaves & Fishes Executive Director, Kiley Benson.

Video produced by Billie Jo Laitinen at B.J.Laits Productions