The delicious potential of rescuing wasted food | Jasmine Crowe-Houston

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Here's a wild stat. 30 to 40 % of food that is produced in the U.S. ends up in the landfills. It's especially upsetting that this much food is tossed, knowing how many people are experiencing hunger and food insecurity. In a 2024 conversation, social entrepreneur Jasmine Crow Houston shares why hunger actually isn't an issue of scarcity, but rather an issue of logistics. She speaks with journalist and TED Radio Hour host Manoush Zomorodi about helping people get access to food in a way that's a major step in the fight against both hunger and climate change.

0:54Enjoy.

1:00Okay, so I have been following Jasmine's career. She gave a TED Talk at TED Women five years ago. Five years ago in December. Yeah, which is crazy. Crazy, yeah. And I interviewed you three years ago, and now here you are, and so much has happened. Yes. You are more of a behind-the-scenes person for people who don't know Goodr. Explain your story, how you came to be so aware of food waste and what you are doing. I started Goodr here in Atlanta. I had created, for people experiencing homelessness, a pop-up restaurant. And the concept really came to me after feeding and working with a volunteer group and making all these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, going out to the streets and handing them out.

1:44And a man telling me, oh, I'm allergic to nuts. And I thought, we just made a thousand peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and nuts are one of the number one allergies. And it made me think that dignity was lost and how we are serving our own house and how we're serving people in need. and that too often we think, well, they're homeless or they're hungry, take this and be happy, forgetting the fact that they can have religious convictions, dietary restrictions, or they can plain out be allergic. And so I created this pop-up restaurant where I would rent tables and chairs and linens and print out menus and let people feel like they were dining at a restaurant and a video went viral.

2:19And it was a 15-second clip. I'll never forget it because it was before Instagram allowed you to have, you know, minute videos, longer videos. So I woke up one morning really afraid because I had never, I mean, obviously gone viral. And I was like, what's going on on Facebook? I need to get off this app. It was like one of those things. And so I'm reading through millions of views and comments. And what people kept asking me was who donated the food? And the truth was nobody. I was couponing, price matching. I would start cooking on Friday, Saturday, go out and feed about three to 500 people every Sunday.

2:52And so I was like, I need to get this food donated. I went to Google fully expecting to get a list of all the businesses that are going to donate food to me to help me keep feeding people and I would live happily ever after. And instead, I found about food waste. And I read an 86-page report by the Harvard Food Law Policy Group. And as I'm reading through this at this point now into the wee hours of the morning, I'm getting upset because I'm thinking about the people that are lined up at 9 a.m. for my 3 p.m. free feeding every Sunday because they know that there's not a lot of people that come out to feed during the week.

3:28They were living at the former Metro Atlanta Peachtree Homeless Task Force. It was the only shelter in the city that would allow families to come. And that's so important. A lot of you all don't know, but if you are a homeless mother, you have a 15-year-old son, you guys got to go to two different shelters. And so I was feeding all these people. I learned about food waste and I became upset. And I was like, I'm going to solve this. I'm going to do something to your point, better and gooder. And that's what got me started. So explain what gooder does now, because from going to peanut butter sandwiches, it's impressive.

4:03So now we have a two-sided business model as it relates to food waste. We can help a business keep all of their food out of landfill. If it's edible, we're getting it to people in need that are people like me feeding people, shelters, safe houses, domestic violence centers, churches. One of our largest partners is communities and schools. We feed thousands of kids every week. So we keep edible food from going to a landfill and we are delivering it directly to people in need while giving all of our clients back a lot of data. How many pounds they're keeping out of the landfill? What does this mean for their CO2 emissions and their carbon footprint?

4:38And then we have a hunger side of our business, which was birthed during the pandemic that really focuses on creating sustainable solutions to solve hunger. We build free grocery stores inside of schools. We have 28 right now around the country. We have grocery and meal delivery during the height of the pandemic. Gooder delivered all the meals to Atlanta public school students that got free breakfast and lunch, but were learning virtually. So we made sure that they got food at home. So we really are solving hunger and food waste. So can you just explain? Can we give her? Yeah.

5:14part of me is like 40 that's such a crazy statistic it's a crazy number like why when you talk to the companies non-profits like what is happening that there is so much food available but going nowhere it's i mean it's a startling number if food waste itself was a country it would be the third largest country in the world so it's a lot of food so you think about that. I mean, between the production, the transportation, and the disposal, nearly 2 % of all U.S. GDP we spend on food that, you know, we never even eat. And I think what it is, is that the old guard is, we've always done it this way.

5:49We've always thrown it away. And this is how we do it. And of course, when I was first starting, people were like, oh, well, if someone gets sick, and we'll get sued. And so Gooder said, hey, we'll take on all of that onus. We provide the packaging materials. We provide the labels. When nonprofits receive the food that comes from Gooder. They sign hold harmless agreements. I have a multi-million dollar liability insurance because the airport was my first customer and we were driving on tarmacs and I ended up having to get insurance that I wasn't quite ready for, but it definitely helped the business.

6:18And even with all of that, people will still say, well, we're just afraid or our lawyers just can't wrap their heads around it. Or, you know, we're just, we're going to compost everything, even if it's edible, which I'm still happier that it's not going into landfill if it gets composted. You know, of course, we deliver to hog farms. We have anaerobic digesters. We'll take food, too. So we want to keep it out of landfill. But feeding hungry people is not a priority for too many people in this country, and that's a problem. Yeah.

6:53Tomorrow, I am coming to see one of your facilities. I'm so excited about that. I am, too. You're going to love it. From what I understand, it's bread day. So bread is going to be coming in from all different places, and then you are going to be sorting it. Some of it goes, as you said, to compost, if it's not for human consumption. Or to a hog farm. Or to a hog farm, which is amazing. Or a cattle farm. I think we have cattle farms now, too. And cattle farms. Yes, you do. I've seen that. And then some will go, of course, to people, to schools, to hospitals, or wherever else. But talk to me more from the corporate side.

7:28Yeah. How did you get people to come on board with this? Like, did something have to change when it comes to laws and forcing companies to do this? Is it because they want to be able to say to their customers, like, we are a sustainable company? So what I used to do is I would go to the websites of the big hotel groups, the big food groups, and I would look at their sustainability reports. This is how I got the airport as a customer. And I went to them and I said, hey, you know, 27 percent of I'm looking at your waste tonnage and 27 percent of this, according to the EPA, is food. So you guys wasted 25 million meals.

8:01Now, I have no idea if that was true, but I looked at their sustainability report. I used the EPA's calculation that food was the number one thing in landfill. And I was able to go back to the Atlanta airport and say, listen, you guys are sitting in College Park. The children in this city are living in poverty. And all this food is going to waste. And this doesn't make any sense. And so the airport became one of our first large-scale customers. And you think of all of the grab-and-go food items. That goes to waste every single night if it's not for gooder. And now that's why I need to be in more airports.

8:31But getting that before it goes to waste and getting it to Gateway Center before Georgia Workforce, their third shift is coming out and building half of this city. A lot of men that are trying to transition out of homelessness, them getting that meal, putting this food in our grocery stores and families taking it home for free. This is what this is what it does. So I think so much it was really about making people keep their promises. you know like hey i won't say the hotel group but they had on their website and this is someone i'm trying to pitch now and i was like hey you guys said you're going to cut food waste in half by 2025 this is in two months like why have you guys not started like what are what's the process so a lot of times it's trying to hold their foot jasmine i want her holding all these companies accountable it's about keeping i mean people need to keep i think we live for the announcement and we as people don't follow up on the delivery, right?

9:26Because for someone to invest millions, I mean, I don't even know how much a Super Bowl commercial costs, but I've heard it's like a million dollars per 30 seconds. I could be wrong. But to invest two to three million dollars and not follow up on your promise. That's called greenwashing. Yes, and that's a lot of that. That's a lot. So you're not just in Atlanta though now, you've grown a lot. Yes, so we are in 15 states, 26 markets. So this is where we have food moving and being donated. And then we have grocery stores in about five states, maybe six or seven now. But we are doing our food waste business, obviously, in more locations.

10:03So someone was asking me, they're like, but how do these companies keep track? Because it must be so random what they can get rid of. And I said, well, actually, there's an app for that. There is. Which at first, when I first heard about your app, I was like, that seems weird. But actually, it is really the linchpin in making this new system work. It's a logistics issue, right? Yeah, tell us about it. That's really what I saw. So when, and shout out to Jackie Chu. She runs TED Atlanta, TEDx Atlanta. And she convinced me to do my first TEDx talk. And when I was talking to her about it, she was like, oh, I get it.

10:34It's a logistics problem. And I was like, you get it. And that's really what it is. Hunger is not an issue of scarcity. And we hear about that, right? We need to produce more food. We need to grow more food. We are wasting 40 % of it. It's really about logistics. How do we connect this excess food with the millions of people that need it? Seniors, their income doesn't change. You know, we're going to be seniors, all of us. Some of us probably already are, but all of us, God willing. And once you get to that point, it doesn't matter then if toilet paper goes up, if bread is more expensive, if eggs are more expensive.

11:04This is all you have to work with. So it's really about how quickly can we match it? So we inventory everything it is that they sell. We create a very easy user experience where they click on the items, tell us how many, request a pickup. We leverage the shared economy that's already out there, meaning, and that's how we've been able to grow to a lot of different locations. We don't have to hire our own drivers. We don't have to, you know, purchase trucks and vehicles. Now, we do have a couple. But what we leverage is a driver that's already out there. And drivers love it. They're like, oh, my God.

11:34Like, I'm feeding people. I'm getting paid to do it. And they make it happen. Literally, like the person, let's say I'm working at a big company and I work, you know, in the cafeteria area. What do I take out my phone and what do I do? Or it could go on your point of sale system and you click on the Gooder app. Your menu is already there and you're just clicking on the items that you have saying I've got 10 chicken breasts. I've got this. Our platform is calculating the approximate weight of those items. So we pull a lot of that data from U.S. Foods, Cisco, whoever they're ordering their food from.

12:05And then it's calculating the tax value of those items at the time of donation, which is a critical offering to our clients. And once that food gets picked up, a nonprofit receives it. They sign for it like they would a UPS package. And a donation letter with a picture of that donation from that nonprofit automatically goes to our client's portal. So now they see everything that they've donated, the nonprofit it went to, and a tax deduction receipt for what they donated. And the carbon that they've saved. And yeah, we have a corporate social responsibility impact report as well as a sustainability.

12:42And it's actually, I remember one of my angel investors, she sits on the board of IHG, who's one of Gooder's customers. And she messaged me last year at their board meeting in London. And she was like, Gooder is on the board report. Like they're literally talking about how we're cutting food waste with this company. So they're starting to show off. They're starting to. They're starting to show. I mean, as they should. It's such a good thing. Growth. I mean, we should be clear. You're not a nonprofit. I'm not. You are a B Corp. Why is that important to you? Why did you decide to go for a for-profit company?

13:17Is it because that is something that you hope to scale? Where are the pros and cons with that? There was a couple things. One, I think the nonprofit was going to be a much harder old guard to get past because everybody always donates to the food bank. It's all we ever know. We've been doing canned food drive since we were eight. Our kids are still doing it in school now. And I felt like I was going to be spending a lot of time trying to gain respect in the nonprofit space. The biggest piece that I saw, though, was that businesses were already paying to throw this food away. So this was not newfound spend.

13:48They're already paying Waste Management, Republic Services, whoever their waste company is. Mind you, the waste industry is a trillion-dollar industry. None of us ever say, let's just keep our trash. No. Right? We were like, it's trash day missing. Oh my God, it's a hurricane. They didn't run today. What's happening? We are paying for this on a daily basis. So when I realized that, I realized that this was not going to be newfound spend for these businesses. It was going to be a better spend. So dollar for dollar, we're a little bit more expensive, but the outcome, the return on the investment for our clients is far much greater than they would ever get from a traditional waste company.

14:21And so I do look at us as a triple bottom line. We're for people, we're for planet, and we are for profit.

14:34That was Jasmine Crow Houston in conversation with Manoush Zomorodi at TED Next in 2024. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarmanivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faze-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.