It’s a fact of the food service industry that not every meal that’s prepared gets served and eaten.
Chartwells, which provides food service for the University of Arkansas, is in the process of preparing about 72,000 meals this week for the activities leading up to – and including – the Walmart Shareholder’s meeting on campus Friday, June 5. Walmart associates, staff, executives, shareholders and guests will be served breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, and Chartwells will also provide food for several special events.
There will be leftovers.
That doesn’t mean they will go to waste.
For the second year U of A student volunteers in the Razorback Food Recovery program are coordinating the effort to collect the unserved food and distribute it to such local agencies as the Salvation Army, Lifesource International and the 7 Hills Center.
“The idea is basically simple,” said Claire Allison, food programs coordinator for the U of A Center for Community Engagement. “We want to keep food from being thrown into the landfill and instead get it to the people who need it. Waste not, want not. But making this happen takes a great deal of work, planning and cooperation. We are very fortunate to have organizations like Chartwells and Tyson Foods who are willing to help make it happen.”
During Walmart week Chartwells staff not only prepare the meals, but they also collect unused food after each meal and store it in a freezer truck provided by Tyson Foods. Each day local agencies send trucks to pick up the food and Razorback Food Recovery volunteers load those trucks with the unserved food.
If the process seems to go very smoothly, that’s because everyone involved has had a lot of practice. The food recovery program has been in operation on campus for more than a year now. Chartwells associates collect and store unused food from campus retail and dining locations in the Arkansas Union as well as from Pomfret Dining Hall. Student volunteers transfer, repackage, weigh and log all recovered items, then organize the distribution to the U of A’s Full Circle Food Pantry as well as to local agencies. Since the Razorback Food Recovery program was launched in spring 2014 more than 25,000 pounds of food have been recovered and distributed.