Client Case Study - 412 Food Rescue

Closing the gap to rescue millions of pounds of food and reduce food insecurity in Pittsburgh and beyond

This early charitable contribution to helped a terrific organization unlock its potential.

412 Food Rescue Founder Leah Lizarondo had an amazing vision: Prevent perfectly good food from restaurants from going to waste by redirecting it to those experiencing food insecurity.

The challenge? There was no distribution system to get food safely from restaurants to people. Leah’s solution - train thousands of volunteer drivers, Food Rescue Heroes, to recover and redistribute food directly to people who need it. She had no shortage of volunteer drivers and businesses who wanted to participate, but for food safety, all of them needed food handling training and commitment to adhering to the organization’s safety practices. At the time, the only other scaled option was to go through a ten-hour commercial food handling course for an hour of volunteering. Volunteers didn’t need to know how to run a restaurant, just how to manage food for 1-3 hours during delivery.

Affective Health Founder, Joe Stafura, worked with 412 Food Rescue to deliver simple, interactive, inspiring food safety training to volunteer drivers. Through this highly successful training experience, food has been safely delivered for nearly ten years, growing beyond Pittsburgh, for a total of 26 million pounds of food rescued, 22 million meals delivered and counting.

When we need to do new things for the first time when the stakes are high, this is where not only the facts, but the feelings, make the difference in following through.