008: Be a Food Hero— Saving the Food Industry with Food Rescue with Leah Lizarondo

Essential Ingredients Podcast

“Food waste happens at every stage of the supply chain so there are many instances that we can, ourselves, rescue.” —Leah Lizarondo

Food shortage is a pressing issue affecting people of all countries and cultures across the globe. Sadly, it's not necessarily due to lack of food production, but the excessive waste that contributes mostly to this problem.

Food Rescue Hero is a non-profit organization that is tackling this problem head-on. Hence, it is dubbed as the Door Dash of food surplus. Food Rescue Hero collects and redistributes excess food from donors and distributes it to partner charities, schools, and community programs. Through their efforts, Food Rescue Hero has saved thousands of meals from going to waste and have ensured those meals get to people who need them.

Listen in as Justine and Food Rescue Hero Founder, Leah Lizarondo share how this initiative can be a model for food rescue projects and how we can be food heroes as consumers. Leah also shares pitching tips to convince potential investors, how to set up a model for an organization, and how our narrative can change our whole conversation.

Meet Leah:

Leah is the Founder of Food Rescue Hero, a food recovery technology platform used in over 25 cities. The platform has redirected over 100 million pounds of perfectly good food from going to waste toward feeding people experiencing food insecurity. Prior to founding Food Rescue Hero, Leah worked in technology, focused on investment, market, and brand strategy for early-stage companies, and in brand management for global FMCG.

Leah has won numerous awards for her work including Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Award in 2020, Carnegie Mellon University’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2022, the Vital Voices Global Leadership Award in 2020 and WE Empower UN SDG challenge in 2019, a global award for women social entrepreneurs. She has been named as one of the 100 Most Influential Leaders by both Pittsburgh Business Times and City & State PA. Most recently, she was recognized in the Grist 50, a list of emerging leaders creating impactful solutions to climate change.

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Episode Highlights:

01:05 The Door Dash of Food Surplus

07:26 From Vision to Mission to Reality

12:24 Pitching Tips

17:04 Expanding the Model