By Raphael Hipos
Medill Reports

In 2020, 13.8 million households across the United States experienced food insecurity, which is defined as the inability to access quality food multiple times a day. A report by the Chicago Food Equity agenda shows that this phenomenon disproportionately affects members of the Black and Latino communities.

This episode of Medill Newsmakers looks at Chicagoans who are fighting food waste and hunger in their own ways.

Video Transcript:

Hello and welcome to Medill newsmakers. I’m Raphael Hipos. Today we’re going to be talking about food insecurity and what Chicagoans are doing to fight it.

According to the USDA, 13.8 million households experienced food insecurity in 2020. This phenomenon disproportionately impacts members of the Black and Latino communities.

A report by the Chicago Food Equity Agenda stated that in late 2020, 19% of people in the Chicago metro region faced hunger. This number rose to 29% in Latino communities and 37% in Black communities. The USDA defines food insecurity as the inability to access quality food multiple times a day. Many Chicagoans have risen to the challenge and are tackling this issue in their own ways. Since February, Jim Humay has partnered with grocery delivery startup Buyk to donate leftover food to community refrigerators in his neighborhood.

HIPOS: Jim, could you tell me about how you started your food rescue operations?

HUMAY: Sure, so it really began with a post on a post on Facebook in our community page. Ukrainian Village has our own kind of neighborhood Facebook page where we communicate with the neighbors. Someone had posted an article from the Block Club blog about a company called Buyk. And their Logan Square location, some of the neighbors around their store had noticed a lot of food being thrown away each evening. And so someone on our Facebook page had mentioned that they were involved with a nonprofit that has a community refrigerator in Humboldt Park on Division, not too far from Ukrainian Village here where I’m at. And she had mentioned that it would be really great if some of that food could end up in their community refrigerator. I thought that was also a great idea. I took the initiative the next day to reach out to the corporate offices of Buyk in New York, sent some messages and some emails, and they were quite receptive. They got back to me fairly quickly within just a couple hours of my initial message. I was put in contact with Jason Benoit, who is the inventory auditor for Buyk here in Chicago. And we set up our first pickup of food for that Thursday and loaded up the minivan with some unused food and brought it to the community refrigerators in our neighborhood. It went very well. The refrigerators were empty, and we’re doing biweekly pickups. So we’re doing twice a week and restocking the refrigerators with the food from Buyk, going through if there’s any expired food or things that are starting to go bad, we take that out of the refrigerator.

HIPOS: So, Jim, how much food do you guys get from Buyk?

HUMAY: Yeah, I mean it depends on sometimes it’s a little more, sometimes it’s a little less. They try to pack them into like some milk crates or old postal crates for us. It can be anywhere from like six to 10 to 12 crates and it varies. Every day is a little different. Sometimes it’s produce, sometimes it’s more. There’s some we do have, like some dairy products, and we do have a few meats and eggs sometimes.

HIPOS: So what is it about the fight against hunger and the fight to address food waste? What was it about it that caused you to take part in this?

HUMAY: So I’m a voluntaryist. I believe in taking direct action whenever possible. And just the opportunity presented itself, and it just seemed like a way that that here’s a problem with a business that has a problem with unused food, and we have people that need food in our communities. It just seemed like a like a simple way of connecting a couple of dots to make sure that that food wasn’t going to waste, and I know there’s so much that goes to waste from our grocery stores and restaurants and food distributors as it is. So much gets thrown away. Honestly what I would love to see is for everyone to spearhead their own project in their own community, and that’s where that’s really where I think we’re going to solve this problem.

HIPOS: Some efforts to fight hunger in Chicago have been going on for longer than others. Let’s turn to Devin Breen, the co-founder and president of the Chiditarod foundation. Since 2006, the foundation has been organizing an annual shopping cart race in Chicago’s West Town and Ukrainian Village neighborhoods. The money that the group raises goes to combating hunger in the city. Since its inception 16 years ago, the foundation has collected over 250,000 pounds of food and donated more than $400,000 to charity. This year, the foundation didn’t organize a race, but they held a block party due to the ongoing pandemic. In order to participate and gain entry, individuals and teams had to bring food donations.

BREEN: Our very first Chiditarod was in the year 2006. And in 2005, I went to my first Burning Man, and I came back full of creative energy. And I said, “What am I going to do to express my creativity? How am I gonna be in action with my creativity?” And I heard about an event in New York City with shopping carts racing around, and I thought, “That’s a great idea. Let’s bring it to Chicago. But let’s turn it into something that’s not just fun. Let’s turn into something that does something for the greater good.” And that’s where the idea of the food drive came into play. Traditionally, we hold a race with five checkpoints. It’s about a 5-mile race. We always start in this location, and then we race everybody out. We chose this year to kind of ease back into this event, and we did it in a way where we can kind of control everything. So we promised our constituents two and a half months ago that we’d have a vaccinated-only event. And this is how we can do that. We can have a block party here. We can control everything. We can create a safe environment where everyone can come together in a safe way, express each other, get creative and support the greater good. Each team has to bring a minimum of 69 pounds of food to the starting line. And we work with the Greater Chicago Food Depository. So as the teams come in, the food gets weighed, that gets loaded onto the truck and the teams have to have the food otherwise they cannot come in. We actually send them to the store if they don’t have enough food. I chose food for two reasons. One, it is a constant need in the city of Chicago. It’s averaged at one about 1 in 5 people is food insecure. It’s a huge need. It’s a massive city, but there’s so much need for just the basic needs for people. And that combined with the idea of using shopping carts in our early race. We thought that would be a really easy fit: put the food in the shopping cart, bring your food in the beginning. We wanted to do something fun, but we want to do something that gives back to the community.

We are estimating 300 to 400 people, maybe 500 people tops, are going to come today, which is a fantastic turnout considering where we are in the COVID cycle. Talking about this really, it gets me a little choked up because so far we have raised over more than $101,000 this year, and we have raised more than 11,000 pounds of food for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. So not only are we going to be addressing hunger in the immediate sense by feeding people, now we’re also putting more than $100,000 into our 501(c)(3) organization that then gives micro grants out to the nonprofits all around Chicago and fighting hunger in creative ways in their communities. We work with the Greater Chicago Food Depository for all that from the food drive, and we have a plethora of other organizations that we work with. We work with small, small neighborhood food pantries. We work with larger organizations that are feeding their community. We work with organizations that are teaching Chicago public schoolchildren about nutrition, about how to cook, and then bring that information on to their families. So we really run the range of everything, and that covers the entire city. The north side, the south side, the west side and the east side, because that’s a need downtown too. Our plans for the future is to keep doing what we do best, which is bringing Chicago’s creative participatory community together to fight hunger all around the city. We have a formula that works. The best thing we could do is continue to encourage people to show up, to stretch themselves creatively, to stretch themselves to what they think is possible. And we’re never going to stop. We can’t stop, can’t stop won’t stop. Hunger doesn’t go away. The need to do good in the world doesn’t go away regardless of how hard it is. So we’re gonna keep showing up and keep making a difference. And that’s what I encourage everyone watching this to do. I didn’t know 20 years ago what I was capable of. But now I do. And only reason I knew is because I got out there and gave it my best shot. I’m just a normal person. All these are normal people, normal people doing exceptional things.

HIPOS: Individuals aren’t the only ones fighting hunger in the city. Too Good to Go is a mobile application that helps fight food waste by connecting users to restaurants and stores that have unsold food. Users can then buy the food at a discounted price, preventing the food from being thrown away. The app launched in Chicago last year, and many restaurants are now listed on it. Joining us today is Gaeleen Quinn, Too Good to Go’s U.S. Head of Impact.

Gaeleen, could you tell me the vision behind Too Good to Go, and could you explain to me how the app works?

QUINN: Sure. So at Too Good to Go, we dream of a planet with no food waste. That’s really our vision. And we created about six years ago in Denmark an app that connects consumers with restaurants, retailers, cafes that have surplus food. Basically, they have food that they weren’t able to sell, and they have left at the end of the day. So that’s when our consumers, who are basically our waste warriors community, come in and actually reserve the bag and pick it up at the designated time.

HIPOS: So you guys launched in Chicago last year. Could you tell me how that went? Is Chicago the first city in the Midwest where you opened?

QUINN: Yeah, we’re actually really, really happy with the way Chicago has actually received the concept. So just in the first month of operation when we launched, we had already 75 stores on the app. Super happy to join the movement, and we save I think it was 1,000 meals on that first month only. So it was kind of like a great opening for us to be there. And we have an office there. We have a group of waste warriors also, you know, working on a daily basis to increase our footprint and make sure that more people in Chicago are aware of the concept and can take advantage of not only the fact that we are helping them fight climate change, but also honestly also having a great discount on food that would always go to waste. It’s been 430 restaurants that are actually on the platform only in Chicago. So this grows, it continues to grow on a daily basis. We’ve saved around 60,000 meals already.

HIPOS: Are there any organizations you work with in Chicago to further your cause?

QUINN: In Chicago particularly we work with the Greater Food Chicago Depository.

HIPOS: What exactly is it that you do in partnership with them?

QUINN: So when you go to the app, you can actually donate directly to them. We have a donation feature for all our consumers. You can go directly there. And we also work together on other activities to actually fundraise and improve the amount of funds that the food depository can have.

HIPOS: Do you have any upcoming plans here in Chicago or even in the Midwest, to be specific?

QUINN: Yeah, I mean, we are focused on continuing to grow in the Chicago area. So we’re really gradually expanding from the center of Chicago, around the suburbs and just growing, growing, growing.  We actually have a team there based in Chicago focused on increasing the number of partners that are on each part of town. And as I said before, apart from that specific grow at a local level, we’re also continuing to expand to other cities across the U.S. you know, climate change and food waste are such big problems that you can be overwhelmed by the issue and maybe feel powerless on things that you can do to fight it. So at Too Good to Go, we actually provide a very easy way for restaurants retailers and for consumers to do a small little action on a daily basis that will contribute to improve our levels of greenhouse gases. And at the same time, it’s actually a great way of bringing some financial incentives back to small businesses that are part of the platform. And just, you know, a really easy innovative way of fighting food waste and at the same time, you know, having the right incentives to do so.

HIPOS: I’d like to thank all of our guests for joining us today. I hope you all learned something, and that we can keep working together to eradicate food insecurity from our society. Thank you, and have a great day.