Second Harvest is building this website to connect food donors directly with social service organizations that supply healthy, fresh food to those experiencing food insecurity.

Food businesses will register online and enter details of the excess food they wish to donate, along with the location and pickup time.

Social service organizations wanting to participate will register and be screened by Second Harvest to ensure safe food handling and proper use in food programs. Once approved, an organization will be able to receive notifications of available food donations according to chosen settings: geography, food type, pickup times available, etc. Representatives will be responsible for rescuing this food at the time and location the food donor specifies.

Any food business in Toronto will be able to register on this system: food retail outlets, coffee house chains, hotels, restaurants, bakeries, caterers, prepared food producers. Essentially, all food business operators who have surplus could redirect this food to the thousands of people experiencing hunger in this city.

Charities and not-for-profit organizations can rescue this nutritious food to support community initiatives, such as student nutrition programs, after-school programs for children and youth, drop-in meals for seniors, transitional housing, and shelters throughout the city. The type of food offered will vary from each donor and what can be rescued will be up to each organization depending on food storage capabilities, which we will help to assess.

Yes! For 32 years, we have rescued and delivered perishable food in a timely and safe manner. Our food donors and recipient organizations will need to comply with Second Harvest’s strict food donation and recovery regulations to ensure the most effective food rescue possible.

Food safety is of paramount importance to Second Harvest, our food donors, and the social service organizations we support. To ensure everyone is safe, we cannot rescue:

• leftover food that has been ‘plated’ and served
• prepared food with meat, egg or milk products that’s been sitting at room temperature for over 2 hours
• food or drinks with alcohol and/or medicinal ingredients
• packaged food that’s been opened or has a broken seal.

We currently rescue one million lbs of food each month from over 400 food businesses who contribute larger-scale donations on a regular basis. Yet even with our trucks on the road 7 days a week, we continually receive calls from retailers and food producers with offers of smaller food donations that are too small for our fleet to pick up. Foodrescue.ca will allow any size of food donation to be easily rescued by the local community, ensuring that fresh, healthy food will get to those who need it most.

Foodrescue.ca will be ready for beta-testing with select participants this winter. We anticipate full community use of the platform in the spring of 2018.