Our Story
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine is a national 501(c)3 non-profit food rescue organization, operating in 16 cities and headquartered in New York City, that provides solutions to prevent excess wholesome cuisine from being wasted. RLC provides services such as food waste consulting, excess food delivery, co-branding services, and tax credit assistance.
RLC approaches the two large issues of hunger and food waste in three main ways.
- First, we localize the issues into sets of communities that can help sustain themselves. We crowdsource the solution of the transportation to the members of the public in these communities as volunteers. After identifying the homeless shelters of a needy community, we proactively find restaurants, hotels, and catering companies with excess food in that vicinity that could help support these disadvantaged communities.
- Second, we leverage technology to facilitate the identification and handling of excess food. Thus, partner food providers report when excess food is occurring and a web application is used to engage community members, because volunteering with us can be as easy as taking a brisk walk.
- Third, we tackle food waste at its root, aiming to eliminate as much food waste as possible and bringing the remaining excess food to where it is needed most. The data of when food waste occurs is used in our analysis of what types of food waste could be avoided, and RLC suggests ways that partner food providers can reduce waste at its root.