Hunger relief is a time-consuming job, but a new mobile app from Central Arkansas-based nonprofit Potluck Food Rescue is making swift work of it. Case in point: About 40 minutes ahead of a meeting I was assigned to cover for this publication, I headed to a North Little Rock Little Caesars where an employee casually handed me a comically large stack of 15 boxed pizzas. Somehow making it to my car without dropping them, I delivered them to Potluck HQ for redistribution and returned to the office just as the meeting was underway. A notification from the app congratulated me on being a #foodrescuehero and thanked me for helping to end food waste and hunger.
The app that handled logistics for my pizza run was made possible by a partnership between Potluck and Food Rescue Hero, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit offering a mobile platform similar to third-party food delivery service apps. Think: Uber Eats or DoorDash, but for food rescue. Potluck’s new executive director, Chris Wyman, said the partnership is a “revolutionary step for food rescue in Arkansas,” a state facing the highest prevalence of food insecurity in the country, according to a report released last September from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Potluck Food Rescue was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1991, but its work began a couple of years earlier, when co-founder Florence Haut started organizing food donations in 1989 after seeing employees at a “major fried chicken chain restaurant” throwing out chicken that hadn’t sold that day. Over the past three-plus decades, the company has diverted millions of pounds of food away from the landfill and into people’s homes.
As apps go, Potluck’s is pretty simple. It takes about 5 minutes to download (go to the app store and search “Potluck Food Rescue”) and register. A dispatcher sends out notifications when smaller rescues are available. Volunteers can see where the pickup point is, how much food they can expect to haul and where it needs to be delivered. If there are two rescues nearby, they can select both. Vetted volunteers who are certified in food safety will have the opportunity to pick up temperature-controlled foods. If a volunteer accepts a rescue, they select their preference for Google Maps or Apple Maps and just follow the instructions. There’s nothing tricky about it. If this reporter can pull it off, you probably can, too.
Apps can be both complicated to build and expensive, so Potluck purchased Food Rescue Hero’s interface with grant funds from the Blue & You Foundation for a Healthier Arkansas, the charitable arm of Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The app works in three counties — Garland, Faulkner and Pulaski — but the plan is to expand statewide.
“We have to prove this thing is going to work well — I already know it will,” Wyman said. “As we start to grow, I can talk to Food Rescue Hero and we’ll add more counties.”