ezCater Partners with Replate to Help Fight Food Waste and Combat Food Insecurity
- ezCater
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- 3 Min Read
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When it comes to food, there’s no doubt that Americans love dining out, ordering in, trying new things and enjoying delicious meals together, at home and at work. But unfortunately, when you cook for large crowds, whether at a restaurant or catering for a work event, it’s hard to avoid food waste.
In the United States alone, 35% of all food is wasted each year. In fact, the amount of food wasted each year could feed every hungry person in the world four times over. Food insecurity is a major problem worldwide, but even in the U.S., poverty and hunger continues to plague families nationwide. According to the USDA, in 2021 33.8 million Americans lived in food insecure households.
The good news is that there are a lot of people, organizations, and companies working hard to make a difference. And ezCater is proud to be part of that effort. Our most recent initiative in this area is partnering with Replate, a platform that gives companies a seamless, reliable, accessible, and affordable way to facilitate, manage, and measure their food recovery efforts.
What We’re Doing to Help: Partnership with Replate
Replate connects restaurants, businesses, events and other organizations that have surplus food with those in the community who need meals. Simply put, they take unused food (that would otherwise go to waste) and make sure it gets to the people who need it most.
It’s a simple way to reduce food waste locally, fight climate change, and counter food insecurity.
Replate already works with some of the best-known brands in the U.S., including Netflix, Snapchat, Slack, Walmart, Amazon, and the New York Times. And now ezCater is joining the ranks to help connect our caterers and our customers to people and organizations in our communities who need meals.
It’s easy to reduce food waste, help people in need, and even fight climate change by working with Replate. The process is easy:
- Create an account and set up a business profile.
- When there’s food to donate, schedule a convenient pickup—either by request, on demand, or recurring.
Replate takes it from there:
- Once your donation is booked, Replate matches it to a local organization that will benefit from the food.
- Next, a Replate food rescuer arrives to your business at the requested time to receive the food, and then delivers the food to a specified organization.
- Replate then tracks the impact of each company’s contributions. Data can be tracked by location; and metrics include total pounds donated, water saved, carbon dioxide diverted from the aid, and meals created (or people served).
To-date, Replate has already rescued more than 1.4 million pounds of food, and diverted 90 million pounds of carbon dioxide from the environment.
Well-rounded Benefits: A win-win-win
Better for the Environment
Food waste isn’t just a problem for people, it’s a problem for the planet. Food waste consumes a whopping 24% of landfill space, making it the largest component of landfill waste. In addition, food waste generates 3.3 billion tons of CO2 annually, and causes the loss of 45 trillion gallons of water. Those are some substantial numbers that do planet Earth a lot of harm. Working with Replate on food recovery helps reduce this waste and the associated environmental hazards that contribute to climate change.
Better for People
No one should go hungry, but people—including millions of children—go to bed with empty bellies every night. This happens despite the fact that, if we could collectively find a way to recover and redistribute the food that is wasted today, we could eradicate hunger at the global level. Food reclamation efforts like the ones powered by Replate make a difference on a local level by feeding people in each community. And those efforts have a ripple effect that creates positive momentum toward a permanent solution.
Better for Your Business
On a strictly dollars-and-cents level, food waste costs the U.S. economy $218 billion annually. But there’s another aspect to how implementing a food reclamation initiative can help your business: the value of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Research shows that well-designed CSR programs can increase revenue by 20%. In general, companies that target social and environmental issues outperform the rest of the market by 3 to 6%. And a vast majority—77%—of consumers say they are motivated to purchase from companies that demonstrate a commitment to making the world a better place.
Make a difference with Replate
The last few years have been challenging for everyone, but they have helped each of us realize that we are all in this together. If we’re going to improve the planet, help our neighbors, and build stronger businesses and communities, we need to work together. We need to look out for each other, and do what we can to lend a hand.
ezCater is proud to be putting our best foot forward in a number of ways. In addition to partnering with Replate to reduce food waste and get meals to people who need them, we are also working to reduce emissions and packaging waste, collaborating with our customers to enable greater philanthropy, and creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace for our ezCater teams nationwide.
You can be part of the change. Getting started with Replate is quick and simple.
Learn more about ezCater’s partnership with Replate. We’d be happy to talk with you about how to get started.