The Leftovers Foundation (Leftovers) began as a food rescue organization after founder Lourdes Juan observed the amount of food going to waste, at a local bakery, at the end of the day. Initially, she recruited friends, family, and community members to help redirect food around the city.

Since the first pickup in October 2012, the Leftovers Foundation’s volunteer crew has grown the organization, redirecting over-produced goods from bakeries, restaurants, and grocery stores to local nonprofits and charities that provide emergency food services. 

Leftovers also partners with service agencies that serve refugee claimant populations including Action Dignity who redirects food from Leftovers' warehouse distributions to refugee families. Leftovers prioritizes sending food to organizations that have low barriers to access including grassroots organizations and community fridges.

The Leftovers Foundation is now located in three major cities (Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg), with a network of over 400 volunteers and 200 service agencies. It serves people experiencing homelessness, people in women’s shelters, those in need of immigrant services, and seniors associations. I spoke to *past interim CEO Audra Stevenson to learn about the Leftovers Foundation’s work over the past decade and the innovative programs they are testing in the city.

“One thing that we've noticed throughout covid is that a lot of service agencies, regardless of demographic and purpose, are now incorporating food service into their day-to-day operations, because it's just become this massive, massive problem that's touching everybody,” Stevenson says. “We have a huge waitlist, now, of agencies that want to get food donated to them, because everyone is just trying to feed as many people as they possibly can.” While food redirection is at the core of what they do, The Leftovers Foundation runs a handful of different programs.

The Rescue Food App 

The Rescue Food App allows food donors and Leftovers volunteers to interact. Donors post whenever they have food available and Leftovers’ city coordinators work to match the donor with a recipient. Volunteers use the app to schedule a time for them to drive food from one location to the other. “It's really easy for people to just go ‘oh, I have a spare 30 minutes’ in the middle of a Tuesday or Thursday and just go and be part of that food delivery,” Stevenson says.

From Fresh Deliveries to the Kin Corner Store

Fresh Deliveries is a now defunct program that was morphed into a pay-what-you-want market “Hampers are a pretty undignified choice for a lot of people. [About] 70% of what's in a hamper people don't use because it's not something they've chosen,” Stevenson says. “What we're trying to transition to is, instead of a pay-what-you-want hamper, it's a pay what you want market where you can go in and actually choose the food that you want for the week.” 

The Kin Market and Coffee Cart are now being tested as a pop-up model at both the Saddletowne and Shawnessy YMCA. She says it will be stocked through a combination of partnerships with large distributors and food donations. The market is also partnered with sister organization Fresh Routes in order to ensure adequate stock levels.

To skeptics of the pay-what-you-can model, Stevenson says “By no means is it something that we know is 100% going to be successful. But what is really interesting to me about that model in particular, is that it really requires the whole community coming together and participating in the model for it to be successful. Because you need a balance of – okay, if somebody comes in, they can only pay say 50% of the cost of the food, we need other members of the community who are willing to come in and pay a little bit more, knowing that that money is going directly to help their community. So it's a way of creating this shared responsibility for feeding everyone in an economically feasible way.”

“I'm excited to test these pilots to get more information, because there is not a ton of people doing it,” Stevenson says. “I know Alice Lam got her store downtown, which is really exciting. There's a guy in Australia, who has built a pay-what-you-want empire. He's got a restaurant, a cafe, a grocery store, all these things, and it's worked out really well for him. So there are definitely examples of success. And so I'm excited to try it from the standpoint of reducing those barriers, but also contributing to the data set on what is possible…We are in such a time of innovation and change that this is the time to be trying new stuff and seeing what happens.”

Anew Upcycling

When Leftovers receives donations that are too large to distribute completely or aren’t useful for service agencies, Anew kicks in to turn those goods into new, fun creations. “A great example is we got a bunch of orange bitters – which go into cocktails – as a donation, and none of our service agencies had a use for it. So what we did is we partnered with a local brewery and they used it to create a beer that they sold in their brewery, and then a portion of the proceeds from that, they donated back to Leftovers,” Stevenson says. 

By doing this, Leftovers diverts food from landfills. “We love to find these creative ways to bring awareness to food waste, partner with local businesses and have a really delicious product at the end of it,” she says.

Home Harvest  

Through Home Harvest, volunteers help those who are limited by ability, or know-how, harvest their gardens. The harvested goods are split between the grower (the person with the garden or tree) and the Leftovers Foundation who redirects the goods to a local non-profit or charity. This program exists both in Calgary and Edmonton. 

Fresh Routes

Fresh Routes – a mobile grocery store – was previously a Leftovers Foundation program that grew into its own nonprofit in late 2019. Its mandate is to deliver affordable fresh produce to food deserts in Calgary. “There are quite a few areas of town where there isn't an affordable grocery store within that neighbourhood, or it's very inaccessible. So Fresh Routes will come in with their truck and do a little pop up market in those locations to make sure everybody can access fresh produce,” Stevenson says. 

In Conclusion

Stevenson says she is surprised by the lack of progress on food insecurity, considering the amount of resources funneled into emergency food services. “It's just getting worse,” she says. “There's over 150 different hamper service organizations, and they definitely have their use case, and it's an important thing to be filling this emergency need. But there's not the same amount of time and attention going into preventing people from becoming food insecure. And that, to me, is the ultimate goal. We want to prevent people from not knowing where their next meal is going to come from, we want to prevent people from even having that thought enter their mind.” 

The ultimate goal is to eradicate the need for organizations like the Leftovers Foundation. “To me, the goal of every charity is to not need to exist, because you've solved the problem,” Stevenson says. “Food insecurity is first and foremost an income issue. And food is the first thing to get compromised from people's budgets when they are tight on cash. And that is where a lot of these issues spring from. So if we're really going to solve it, we need to look at something like universal basic income or income supports in some capacity,” she says.

Stevenson invites everyone to become a part of the Leftovers community. “Whether you can volunteer, whether you want to just have a conversation, whether you can donate or become part of our community in some capacity, we love new people. We love hanging out. We love chatting about food systems, and the more people that get involved, the better the next solution will be. So come and join our squad.”

*This interview was conducted when Audra Stevenson was interim CEO at the Leftovers Foundation. The current CEO is Cory Rianson.

This article is part 3 in the Refugee Claimant Series. The Refugee Claimant Series was developed in partnership with Black People United and the Leftovers Foundation. For an introduction to the series, check out Afros In Tha City Presents: Refugee Claimant Series in Partnership with BPU and the Leftovers Foundation. For part part 1 of the series, check out Canadian Refugee Claimants Reveal the Lack of Access to Immigrant Social Services. For part 2 of the series, check out How Black People United is Expanding Networks of Care Throughout Mohkínstsis.