Putting Good Food to Good Use
Food Rescue
Taylor Moore, Director
231-995-7723
2889 Aero-Park Dr
Traverse City MI 49686
Food Rescue rescues, harvests, repacks, and delivers 2.6 million pounds of food a year — enough food to make 1.8 million meals — to 70+ food pantries and community meal programs in a five county region twice the size of Rhode Island. Every day, more than 10,000 pounds of food is rescued and delivered at no cost to the pantries and meal programs — keeping good food out of landfill and getting it to neighbors.
How It Works
Food Rescue coordinates a regional system connecting 210+ food donors — including 82 local farms — volunteers, and community partners. We pick up excess food from farms, grocers, and producers, repack it into pantry-ready boxes so it can be easily distributed, and deliver it at no cost to the pantries and meal programs we serve.
A key part of this work is Healthy Harvest, our farm-based gleaning program. Farms invite our volunteers and staff to harvest fruits and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste — not because they aren’t needed, but because there aren’t enough hands or systems to get that food where it needs to go.
Why Our Work Matters
16,00 households in our region rely on food pantries and meal programs to access the nutritious food they need — 1/3 are children, 1/3 are seniors, and many have disabilities.
At the same time, large amounts of nutritious food are lost due to gaps in labor, timing, and logistics.
Food Rescue bridges this gap — strengthening the local food system, supporting farmers, and ensuring healthy food is available when pantry doors open.
Our work also has significant environmental impact, diverting more than 2.1 million pounds of food from landfill each year.
Food Rescue rescues, harvests, repacks, and distributes 2.6 MILLION POUNDS of food a year.
Food Rescue picks up 10,000 pounds of food a day from grocery stores, bakeries, and farms. That’s enough food to make 8,500 meals, worth $19,000, delivered every day.
We deliver it to 70+ food pantries, meal programs, and baby pantries in a five-county region twice the size of Rhode Island.
Food Rescue makes 275 deliveries a month to the pantries and meal sites of the Northwest Food Coalition, at no cost to the pantries.
46% of the food we deliver is fruits and vegetables. We concentrate on nutritious food that people have the hardest time accessing.
Food Rescue delivers 2,600,000 pounds of food a year. That’s $5 million worth of food — enough food to make 2.2 million meals!
How you can help
DONATE
One dollar donated helps us distribute four pounds of healthy food. Your charitable contributions keep our trucks on the road and help keep pantry shelves full of nutritious food.
CONNECT
We support the Northwest Food Coalition and collaborative community efforts to make sure our neighbors have access to the nutritious food they need. Contact us and join the work.
VOLUNTEER
Become a Healthy Harvester! Help us repack food into pantry-sized boxes in our warehouse year-round, and in season, help us glean extra food from the fields of local farmers.
FOLLOW US
Find us on Facebook and Instagram @foodrescuenwmi.
Our Roots
Our Roots
Food Rescue was founded in 2008 by a group of community leaders — Bruce Byl, Homer Nye, Becky Mang, George Powell, and GoodwillNMI CEO Cecil McNally — to ensure that food grown in our region reaches families who need it, rather than being left in the field or lost to waste. By connecting farms, food donors, volunteers, and the Northwest Food Coalition, they created a coordinated system that keeps good food out of landfill and ensures access to nutritious food, with client-centered distribution that strengthens the local food system.
Food Rescue is a program of Goodwill Northern Michigan, a local nonprofit founded in 1972. Through charitable donations and our community-supported social enterprise — nine thrift stores, an outlet, and an ecommerce platform — we generate the funding to power this work. Our stores cover all administrative and overhead costs, ensuring that philanthropic investments in Food Rescue go directly to delivering nutritious food to our community.
