Food Shift: Start-Up Aims To Solve Hunger Through Food Recovery

About 40% of all food goes to waste while 49 million people in America goes to bed with hungry stomachs. Thus, Dana Frasz founded Food Shift, an organization that aims to solve the hunger issue by recycling food and putting it in the hands of the people who are in need of food.

Frasz started on recovering food after she realized that there are a lot of food being wasted on her school campus during her college years. Hence, she organized a food recovery group, a group that collects food at the dining halls twice a day.

"The problem with that model is [that] it wasn't financially sustainable," she explained to TakePart. "It wasn't institutionalized. That's when I started to question the all-volunteer charity model and began to ask what a more sustainable, efficient, institutionalized model might look like."

SO excited to be nominated to win $5,000 for @takepart Re-visionaries contest! Help VOTE for our founder @danafrasz https://t.co/0Sc5vgZxCg

— Food Shift (@FoodShift) Marso 8, 2016

When asked what inspires her to go back to work on Food Shift, Frasz said the people involved in her food recovery project keeps her going every day. "I love working directly with residents who are formerly homeless, who are now in this housing community that we're working with," Dana said.

After many years of research, the organization comes up with a "collaborative and innovative solutions that more effectively recover, redistribute, and process food." As a matter of fact, Food Shift is still continuously growing. The company is opening Alameda Kitchen, a place where homeless people can get a job training while at the same time turning recovered food like overripe fruits and other bruise food into whole new delicious meals. 

Thus, Food Shift is currently looking to hire an operations director. Thereafter, the organization intends to hire a chef. Although Food Shift is currently busy with their projects, Frasz, on the other hand, is still busy with her creative mind - trying to figure out the best new ways on how to turn wasted food into an opportunity to fill hungry stomachs at the same time stop the food waste issue.