For more than 34 years, City Harvest has been working to alleviate hunger in New York City. As the world’s first food rescue organization, and since pioneering this model in 1982, City Harvest has collected and distributed over 600 million pounds of nutritious food throughout the five boroughs of New York City. For many people that City Harvest serves, healthy food is unavailable and unaffordable in their communities. Food rescue is the process of safely recovering surplus food from the supply chain and distributing it to people in need.
Using their fleet of 22 refrigerated trucks, City Harvest collects excess food from over 2,500 generous food donors from all segments of the food industry, including farms, restaurants, grocers, bakeries, and manufacturers, and delivers it free of charge to 500 soup kitchens, food pantries and other community food programs across the city. This year, they will collect 55 million pounds of food to help feed the nearly 1.4 million New Yorkers facing hunger.
BTIG COLLABORATION AND IMPACT:
For the last three years, City Harvest has been a recipient of donations through their partnership with BTIG Charity Day. BTIG’s support helped City Harvest to continue to maintain their food rescue operations and increase their services to meet the sustained high demand for food. As more people are affected by recessions and high unemployment in New York City, the need for emergency food has dramatically increased. BTIG’s donation to City Harvest helped provide food for families struggling to put meals on their tables. After BTIG Charity Day, the firm again partnered with City Harvest for an employee volunteer activity at City Harvest’s Food Rescue Facility in Long Island City, Queens. The BTIG team repacked thousands of pounds of bulk produce into family-sized units for more efficient distribution to their network of community food programs. Soup kitchens and food pantries across New York City were the beneficiaries of the team’s hard work. BTIG also participated in an additional volunteer activity with City Harvest rescuing food from the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City.
“City Harvest is proud to partner with BTIG through Charity Day, which has raised $50,000, enough to feed over 7,100 hungry New Yorkers for a month. Through BTIG’s ongoing commitment to serving the community, they have also repacked enough food for over 3,700 hungry families across New York City’s five boroughs. By standing together, we can make a real difference in the fight against hunger.”
— Rebecca Fontes, Director of New Business Development, City Harvest