This is what happens to fruits and vegetables the supermarket can’t sell

One recent morning, a line of trucks were delivering shipments of food to the loading docks behind the large Shop Rite in Wallington — the side most customers never see.

Bruno Facundo was there too. But he backed his refrigerated truck up to the building not to deliver food — but to take it away.

That day he was scheduled to make pickups from 10 supermarkets, and deliver the food to five food pantries throughout North Jersey.

Facundo drives one of eight refrigerated trucks operated by Table to Table, a non-profit that collects fresh produce from supermarkets, restaurants, caterers and food distributors, and delivers it to nearly 170 different food relief agencies in Bergen, Passaic, Hudson and Essex counties.

The story continues below the gallery.

This year Table to Table will collect and distribute the equivalent of 20 million meals, reaching about 300,000 people. “We’re the UPS of food,” said Anthony Math, the non-profit’s director of food sourcing.

Each of Table to Table’s refrigerated trucks can hold up to eight pallets worth of food. A pallet is generally three and a half feet wide by six and a half feet tall. Many small food pantries can’t afford a refrigerated truck, so Table to Table provides that service, which lets the pantries serve fresh produce to their clients and provide a healthier diet.

Providing fresh produce to clients of food pantries is important because it staves off illness, said Ilene Isaacs, who has been Table to Table’s director for 16 years. “It helps children grow and develop. This food would all go to landfills otherwise and add to environmental issues.”

Since the non-profit started in 1999, it has kept 45,000 tons of food out of landfills.

“And we help reduce the food budgets of the pantries we serve, so they can focus their resources on other initiatives,” Isaacs said. The agency delivers the food at no cost to the pantries. It raised its money through donations, and takes no money in government grants.

Table to Table picks up from all the major supermarket chains, including Shop Rite, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Stop & Shop and Wegmans, as well as distributors of dairy products, meat and produce. They pick up from restaurants, including chains such as Red Lobster and Olive Garden.

“There will be surplus produce that a store can’t sell or a restaurant can’t use, or maybe an order gets cancelled or rejected,” Math said. “The supermarkets cull their produce every day, removing from the shelves apples or other fruits that are slightly bruised, or they’ll pull things before the ‘sell by’ date comes up.

“The produce we pick up is still edible, but it may have a small indent or the potatoes aren’t round enough for a caterer to use,” he said. “The quality of the food we pick up is amazing.”

And sometimes it’s not the sort of food you’d expect to find at a food pantry. The agency has received donations of baby bok choy, kale, parsnips, liver, and frozen shrimp.

“We give out recipes to help the food pantry clients know how to prepare some of the food they’re not as familiar with,” Math said. “The supermarkets and restaurants benefit by giving it to us because they get a nice tax deduction, and it reduces the cost of their waste carting fees.”

After Facundo had backed up to the Wallington Shop Rite loading dock, several supermarket employees stacked boxes of frozen meat, cereal, pineapples, lettuce, mangoes, apples, oranges and pears in the Table to Table truck.

“This is such a great program — all this food would not be used otherwise,” said Marie Sweeney-Tevis, public relations director for Mahwah-based Inserra Supermarkets, which operates 21 Shop Rites in New Jersey and five other states.

A short drive later, Facundo rolled to the curb in front of the First Seventh Day Adventist Church on Elmwood Avenue in Montclair. A small, lively band of volunteers sprung to action, taking the boxes of food off the truck and rolling them on hand trucks into the church’s food pantry.

“There’s so much food waste because there’s such affluence in our area,” Isaacs said. “And yet there’s so much hunger here. We’re standing in an area of the state — Essex County — with the highest food insecurity. There’s so much affluence that there should be enough to help those in need.”

The USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey team is tackling the issue of food waste, taking a look at the worst offenders and the innovators leading the charge to cut food waste. We’ll also show you how we can all stop wasting food in New Jersey, from farm to kitchen. Check back at northjersey.com this week for more in our #WasteNotNJ series.

More on food waste in NJ

Ample Harvest: Too many tomatoes? Website links backyard gardeners with food pantries

Read or Share this story: https://njersy.co/2Lmca6U