Here is the full transcript of Gates Millennium Scholar Robert Lee’s fireside chat: Rescuing Leftover Cuisine @ Talks at Google conference. This event occurred on January 29th, 2018.
Moderator: LAUREN LEBEOUF
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Robert, thank you for being here.
ROBERT LEE: Of course.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: We’re happy to have you. So as we just learned in the video, food insecurity is very personal to you. Can you talk more about that?
ROBERT LEE: Sure. Yeah. My parents were Korean, from South Korea, and they essentially moved over without really knowing any English. And so my dad was a civil engineer and my mom was a banker. But when they came over to the States, that really didn’t matter because they didn’t know any English. And so I remember the times when we just are one huge bowl of ramen for a meal for the whole day because that was pretty much it. And you know, as I mentioned in the video, you just think that’s normal and you just kind of live with it. But it was to the point where I just hated ramen because we just had it so much.
But I grew up with kind of that kind of environment. And my parents would always tell me about how any food that you– I’m sure people have the same experience in terms of stories that they’re told. But I was told that any food that I would waste would basically have to be eaten in my afterlife all at once. So I kind of grew up with the values of never wasting food and really cherishing food whenever we had it.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Wow! Very cool. And you won a CNN Hero Award and you’re on Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs list. Your parents must be very proud. So what prompted you — you left a very secure job in finance and you started RLC. What prompted that?
ROBERT LEE: Oh, man. So many things I think because the two issues were so close to me and so personal, I think having the opportunity to kind of give back in this way, in such a direct and commonsense way and efficient way, and the opportunity to scale a solution that was such a huge problem, food waste and hunger and all these different kind of facets of those two things. And while I was working at JP Morgan, I kind of compared my time of how much time I was spending and what impact that had at JP Morgan, and the same amount of time and impact it would have had. Rescuing Leftover Cuisine. It was just two worlds apart. And I just couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to do something more meaningful with my time, and had an outlet to do it. So I took the opportunity, took the risk. And yeah, it was great.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: A risk analyst who took a risk; I love it. It’s great. Thank you. OK, so what was the process of starting RLC?
ROBERT LEE: Yeah. So starting RLC pretty much came from way back into college. So during college was when I came across the concept of food rescue. There was a club that brought leftover dining hall food to homeless shelters called Two Birds One Stone.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: At NYU, right?
ROBERT LEE: At NYU. And it basically kind of opened my eyes to food rescue as a concept, and to the fact that food can be donated, and that there’s so much excess food. So we were basically– a bunch of us, a couple of friends and I, were kind of executive board members of that club and kind of expanded it throughout the four years of NYU, because it started out as just one dining hall to one homeless shelter. But eventually, under our leadership, were able to grow it out to all the different dining halls, and basically grow it out. And that kind of opened my eyes to the fact that it’s not just dining halls.
It’s also restaurants and different food businesses that can donate their food, and that there’s such a huge need at homeless shelters. And so that first experience paved the way for the first inkling of an idea of RLC at Two Birds One Stone. We kind of did everything on a Google spreadsheet, coordinating all these different volunteers and things like that. But we had this dream of having an automated system that would connect excess food to homeless shelters, and have volunteers be the solution because during college years, we had the time to do a bunch of research and figure out that solutions to food rescue, in terms of food rescue, existed and had really great impact in terms of great work of City Harvest and Food Bank and things like that. But there was a little bit of a gap of how much food there was out there versus what they could pick up.
And so we wanted to basically tackle that specific gap and operate in that niche with the model that we kind of learned and perfected during the college years. And so we took all that kind of together and then entered into a venture competition, ended up winning some seed money, and pretty much launched it from there and kept on going.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Very cool. So what’s the biggest challenge that you’ve faced as a social entrepreneur?
ROBERT LEE: There’s so many I think– in general, I think the uncertainty is the biggest challenging aspect. There’s no way to project in terms of how many new food donors we’re going to bring on board, how much pounds of food we’re going to be able to bring on board. But you kind of rely on the different aspects that you can rely on, like how much time you put in, how much effort you put in, how many volunteers you can corral to the cause, And you basically see what happens. Because of how local it is and how small it is, it’s sometimes outsized in terms of expectations of what you would think you get out of it.
But it turns out to be really good sometimes. So I would say just that uncertainty is the biggest challenge.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Cool. So let’s talk about food waste, which is astounding in this country. We heard a few stats in the video, but since you’re the expert, I would love for you to talk more about it. Give us all of your wisdom on food waste.
ROBERT LEE: Sure. I think – yeah. When you think about food waste, it is just food waste. But when you think about the different facets of what that means, it’s kind of mind blowing because it’s not just about food waste. It’s about the environmental impact of that food waste, the moral implications, what that food has potential to do, as well as the actual economic impact of that.
So on the environmental issue, people don’t really know that food waste is one of the largest, if not the largest component of solid waste in the waste stream and actually lands in landfills, where it basically contributes to carbon emissions through methane gases, which is actually 20 times worse than carbon dioxide. And if you take food waste as a kind of a global emitter of carbon emissions and take it out as if it’s like a country, it would rank third right after the USA and China. So just as a kind of environmental issue after the fact of wasting food, it’s a huge kind of issue. But even going before that supply chain of actually wasting the food, the amount of land, amount of natural resources used to grow that food is all wasted as well. To grow the food that we all eat in this country, we use half the US land, 80% of the US fresh water, 10% of US energy budget is used to transport that food in trucks and supply chain and things like that. So all of that is wasted when you waste 40% of the food that you’re producing. So it’s the environmental impact on both sides.
And so when you combine those things, it’s a huge, huge, non-negligible amount. And that’s just the environmental side. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of studies and things like that. And I think there needs to be more studies on the environmental impact of food waste. But the NRDC does a really good job of telling people about the issue of food waste. And one of the other things that they mention, obviously, is the fact that the potential of food waste is huge It’s a $165 billion problem in the US. It’s obviously an economic issue. People are buying food from the supermarkets and then wasting it. You might as well just not buy 40% of the food that you’re buying at the supermarket. So it’s a huge economic cost as well. Obviously, the US energy budget and things like that, that’s our taxes going into food that’s like going to be wasted, like corn, subsidies for corn.
Why do we do that? Yeah, it’s a huge, complex issue, and implications that people don’t really think about when you think about it on a deeper level Obviously, along the lines of potential food waste, the food that’s actually going to waste obviously can feed people So people can be fed with that And what’s more important than feeding people that are hungry and need that food if you’re going to be wasting it? And when you think about the flip side to that equation of food waste and hunger, 49 million Americans are food insecure And I mention in the video, if you think about the nutritional– and obviously poverty is a multi-faceted issue as well, and it’s not just nutrition– but if you think about just nutrition, reducing 30% of the wasted food and bringing that directly to the people who are food insecure would eliminate hunger, which means that there’s still 2/3 of food waste leftover that needs to be reduced as well, which is why there’s the food waste hierarchy of reducing it on source and then feeding people, feeding animals, composting, and then lastly, landfill. But I’m kind of going on and on about food waste. You know, it’s just so much. It’s so much. And it’s a huge, huge issue.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: So how do we compare to other countries?
ROBERT LEE: The US throws out a lot. The average that people say is 40%, according to reports. On the worldwide level, we waste about 30% of food that we produce in the world. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. And US is obviously a little bit worse. But it’s interesting because the US, obviously, as one of the developed nations, seems to waste a lot more food on our end, on the consumer end, which means there’s a lot of education that needs to happen in terms of recognizing that food waste is a problem, but also doing something about it, and doing easy things that can be simply implemented in all of our lives.
In terms of developing nations, a lot of their food waste is happening on the agricultural — on the earlier side of the supply chain because they don’t have the technology or they don’t have the resources to implement the kind of systems that they have in the US. So it’s a shame, because obviously the story that I just mentioned about having enough nutrition in the US is the same. It’s parallel across the world as well. In the world, if we reduce just one third of the food that we have going to waste, that could be easily enough to eliminate food insecurity in the world.
So we talk about overpopulation and the fear of feeding everyone and things like that. But no one is thinking about why not reduce the food waste that we have going on to solve that problem? I mean, we don’t have to increase production. We can just be more efficient with the food that we’re already producing. I think overall, people are becoming more and more aware of the issue. And I’m glad that people are starting to pay attention.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: So is food waste getting better or is it getting worse? Is it sort of the same?
ROBERT LEE: I think there’s not as much data as there needs to be in terms of measurement and things like that. I think even more granular reports need to be published in terms of where specifically in the supply chain food is being wasted. But in general, it seems like the problem of food waste is becoming more and more of a mainstream issue that people are caring about, just in terms of the sheer number of articles and attention that people are putting on food waste has been increasing in the past three or four years. We’re lucky in that we just started in 2013, and it’s been a huge increase in the level of attention that people are putting into food waste. So we do believe that it’s getting better. But there’s still obviously a lot of work to be done.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: OK. So you’ve started RLC. So how is RLC solving the problem? How is it different than other organizations?
ROBERT LEE: Yeah. That’s pretty much the number one question we always get. But we started it in 2013 because, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, we started to notice that there was kind of a gap or niche in the food rescue space. And when we started thinking about outside the border of NYU and how food rescue can be applied, we did a lot of research into City Harvest and Food Bank and even OzHarvest in Australia and things like that to figure out what solutions already existed and what was happening and what was working. And so we realized that, at least for New York City, the current solutions typically had a minimum pound requirement, where they would not go by for food that was under a certain number of pounds.
So we decided to essentially target that specific gap, that niche market, and essentially kind of use our solution to that problem. So we like to think of ourselves as different in terms of that minimum pound requirement because we don’t have one, but also in the fact that we use a kind of technology-driven process by using a web application code on Ruby on Rails that basically allows people to kind of sign up online for any pickup that they want and crowdsource that transportation problem, that distribution problem between the excess food and the hungry.
So yeah, there’s a whole bunch of other kind of things. I think one of the other ways we’re different is that we are much more scalable and that we have this kind of platform that can just be kind of basically put to use in different geographic areas, not just New York City. And in other models, you may have to actually own trucks, and own trucks and operate trucks in each different city that you’re running in. So we don’t have that kind of issue.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: So with RLC, there’s three parties. You have a food partner or a donor, you have the volunteers, and then you have the shelter. So if I’m a food partner, what does that look like?
ROBERT LEE: For a food donor, we try to make it as easy as possible because it’s sometimes difficult for food donors to feel comfortable about donating food. There’s always so many stigmas and myths around donating food. So we try to make it as easy as possible, and we cater to the food donors’ needs. So as a food donor, when they partner with RLC, they’re first asked when they throw out their food and at what frequency. So for example, just thinking about any coffee shop, they may have pastries and muffins at the end of the night that they throw out when they’re closing out for the day. And so they can tell us, hey, we actually have these muffins and pastries that we throw out every single night at 9:00 PM when we close.
And what we can do is essentially basically ensure that we’re there at that time every single day and make it super easy for them. Instead of throwing it out into a trash bag, just put it into a different container that they can actually donate. We do the transportation, we do all the paperwork and things like that for them and make it super easy for them to feel the impact and understand that their food is going to the hungry without actually doing that much work.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: You mentioned there’s myths about donating food. So you often hear that it’s illegal to donate food, you can’t do it, which is why restaurants throw it out. But that’s not necessarily true, especially with RLC. Can you talk more about that?
ROBERT LEE: Yeah. The number one pushback we get from restaurants and other food businesses is that it’s illegal, which is unfortunately just widespread for some reason. There’s a Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act of 1996; that’s a federal law that basically protects all food donors from legal liability, except in the case of gross negligence, which is basically extreme carelessness. So as long as they’re adhering to all the food safety standards and ensuring that they are a licensed food vendor and they know how to handle food and donating food in the right way, there’s no legal liability. Of course, if they throw the food on the ground and then donate, that’s obviously not the same thing. But the federal law existed since 1996, but all 50 states have also passed state versions of that same exact Good Samaritan Law, in some cases actually helping to provide even more additional protections for food donors. So it’s kind of insane to hear sometimes from restaurants that they heard that McDonald’s got sued for some reason or another about food insecurity and people being sick off of that food that they donated.
And there’s no legal case. There’s nothing in the case record about that. So it’s just myths. And people have been doing food rescue for over 35, 40 years now. And as long as we are all adhering to the same food safety standards ensuring that the food is safe, food can be donated and can be completely fine. So yeah, I think that’s the number one education point that needs to happen for people to really start understanding that licensed food vendors, people that can actually prepare the food correctly and safely, can donate that food.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Good to know. So it’s so great you have restaurants that donate the food. Do you report back any data, you know, letting them know, this is how much you’re wasting? Can you talk about that?
ROBERT LEE: Yeah. So one of the benefits that we provide for restaurants is the data piece because there’s a hierarchy of what food waste should go to. I mentioned it a little bit. The number one thing is to reduce it from the get-go. And for that, it pretty much is thinking about creative ways to use excess food and things like that, or just from the very production of it, just don’t produce it. And so we provide monthly data in terms of days and number of pounds on how much food is being donated and thus would have been wasted if they didn’t work with us. And what that allows the partners to do is essentially analyze that data and see, oh, hey, I did not expect that much food to be going to waste.
There’s a lot of partners that we’ve worked with initially that have given us estimates like, oh, yeah, it’s going to be about 40 pounds. And it turns out to be 40 pounds. For the first two, three weeks, it turns out to be over 100 pounds. And that’s because they’re just not measuring it. And just like any KPI, if you’re not measuring it, you can’t do anything about it, right? And so basically having that monthly data allows them to do not just looking at and measuring out food waste data, but also thinking about, oh, hey, every Monday or every weekend we seem to have much more food waste than other days.
And they can use that, internalize that, and basically reduce it on their own. Typically food donors want to, obviously, keep every single sale that they have. So there’s always going to be a little bit of food that is going to go to waste. But we typically see the numbers kind of start to come down and plateau over time. And that’s one of the kind of key things that we like to do, is ensure that we’re measuring our food waste in terms of our success metrics, but also keeping in mind that we don’t want to necessarily have more pounds of food. We retain our main KPI and main success measure as the number of partners because that’s the real measure of success in terms of what we’re thinking.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: So before we get to volunteers, let’s talk about the shelters or the food recipients. What does it look like for them?
ROBERT LEE: So for the food recipients, they’re typically homeless shelters, soup kitchens, food pantries, community centers, things like that They’re 501(c)3 non-profit organizations. And typically what happens is, after we find a restaurant partner that has a certain number of pounds of food, and they give us an expectation of what type of food is going to go to waste and things like that and can be donated, we go and match that up. We have great, wonderful staff to help us do this. And they basically help match the food to what food is needed at the homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and food pantries. And that way it can be a regular, recurring food item that can basically offset the food that they would normally buy. So they can expect it. They know how much, typically, on average, it’s going to be, and essentially they can take that out of the food budget. And so that kind of partnership really starts with the food donor. And on the food recipient side, they receive it, they give us a receipt that basically helps us measure the number of pounds. And that basically goes back to the food donor and helps us maintain our records.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: And so for the shelters, their goal is probably that they never have to buy food. That’s the goal for them, because they still do.
ROBERT LEE: Yeah, they still do.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Have to buy food.
ROBERT LEE: They still do.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Oy.
ROBERT LEE: Yeah, it’s insane. There’s just so much food out there. But it’s always about the right type of food, because different homeless shelters have different requirements because they do different services. Like some of them do just breakfast or some of them do just dinner And so bringing a bunch of bagels to someone that just does dinner is not helpful So it’s just making that matching. And that’s kind of where we can make that matching happen.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Cool. OK. So let’s talk about volunteers because without volunteers, the organization doesn’t really run. I mean, there are other reasons. So what does it look like if you are a volunteer, if you sign up to volunteer?
ROBERT LEE: So anyone can go online and sign up to volunteer at Rescuing Leftover Cuisine. It’s just www.rescuingleft overcuisine.org/calendar. And there’s basically a list of all the events that we have in your region. And essentially the events or rescues are listed in chronological order and in different locations within your region. So for example, in New York City, there’s FiDi, there’s Midtown, there’s Upper West Side, Upper East Side. And essentially people can filter down and look on a map view as well and figure out what time and location they’re available to help out. These pickups are volunteer opportunities that are really easy to kind of fit into your schedule because it’s just 30 minutes of your time to an hour. So you can do it easily on your way to work, on your way between classes or between the gym and other things, or in place of the gym.
And you essentially can help make direct impact because you’re going to actually see — after you sign up you’ll get an automated confirmation e-mails and all this, and you’ll get the contact information of the person who’s going to be leading your event. And once you meet with everyone, you can actually see the actual food that’s about to go to waste. The restaurant’s cleaning up, you get to see the aluminum tins or bags and things like that. And you can actually rescue that and walk it over. Sometimes it will be 15 minutes walking, sometimes it will be five minutes of walking. Sometimes it will be a little bit more, 25 minutes of walking. But it will be within that neighborhood, same neighborhood. And that’s kind of what I love about the model is it’s just local. It’s just local restaurants helping local homeless shelters with local volunteers. And that’s it.
They drop it off, they get the receipt, and they upload it online through the application. And that’s it. They made that impact. They can see the people, the line of people outside the homeless shelter that’s going to be fed with that food. So it’s immediate. It’s that impact that they get to see. So for a volunteer, it’s typically super easy. If people want to get even more involved, they can be a lead rescuer, much like yourself. And people can lead on a weekly basis and actually help lead other volunteers and take them through the route and be kind of responsible for that route. So yeah, there’s a lot of ways to help out in your neighborhood.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Yeah, I am a volunteer. I volunteer every week with the organization. It’s exactly what you said. It’s just very, very simple. I found you on VolunteerMatch, which is where every volunteer opportunity is listed. And I just couldn’t believe it was that simple. And I think for people with busy schedules, like all of us, it really is perfect. And it’s also a great way to get exercise, to bring your friends and do it. Everyone’s trying to save money, not go to the bar at night. Bring them to a shift. Yeah, and it truly is 30 minutes to an hour door to door. But yeah, to bring the food in and to walk it into a shelter, and to see the people who are going to eat it right there, is just so wonderful. That’s what I love about RLC. With other organizations, I think there’s a long orientation process, and a wait list. And this is just click, sign up, show up, and just kind of do it. Very, very simple. Couldn’t believe it was that simple.
ROBERT LEE: Yeah. We try to make it easy because we really need as many people to help with this problem because food waste is happening literally everywhere around us. And we’re all just moving all the time. And if we were moving with excess food and dropping it off while we were going to places, it would just make it so much easier, and we could solve this problem. So we didn’t want that to be a barrier. And we wanted to give the power to the people to basically make a difference in this problem. But of course, there’s the lead rescuers to make sure that people are not stealing the food and things like that. But the lead rescuers are kind of– all the volunteers are kind of the crux of this model.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: And so you’ve expanded. So you started in New York City and you’ve expanded to how many cities now?
ROBERT LEE: 16.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: 16 cities around the US. How is that expansion, and what are the—
ROBERT LEE: It’s exciting. I mean, it’s a lot of work. It’s exciting to see that it’s not just New York City because New York City is such a unique city. We started here. We’re headquartered here. But it’s very different in other branches. New York City, you can walk because there are homeless shelters and kitchens literally 15 minutes, 20 minutes away on foot from places. And you’ll never know it. But in places like other cities, any other city, you’ll have to drive. And we had to figure out what’s the right model to tweak the technology a little bit to accommodate for that and things like that. But it’s working out really well. It’s also very different terms of the types of food businesses that are outside of New York City.
A lot of the pounds of food that we get are sometimes larger. But it’s exciting. We currently are working on a lot of the lower end of the supply chain in terms of restaurants, retail businesses. But eventually, obviously the food waste problem is so complex that we wanted to help out — with the same technology and the same system — help out with any level of the supply chain wherever excess food is happening. So it’s exciting, but obviously a lot of things to consider.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Great. If anyone has any questions, you can line up at the mics in the aisles, and I’ll keep asking you questions. So what can people do? Of course they can volunteer. What other types of things do you need help with? I believe you got a grant last year. What does your organization need?
ROBERT LEE: So yeah, last year we actually got a grant from Google, which was really amazing. Thanks again for that.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: It wasn’t me.
ROBERT LEE: But it helped us develop our technology. And at the crux of it, this is a technology-driven system. Without the technology we would have to have five more staff members that are coordinating and sending emails and sending reminder emails and things like that. But with this technology we were able to scale it up and be much more efficient. So in terms of ways that people can help, there’s so many. On the most basic level, you can give time, you can give resources, you can give contacts. So on the time side, obviously, you can sign up as a regular volunteer and sign up whenever you want, whenever you’re available. And if you want to invest even more time, you can be a lead rescuer, you can be a core rescuer doing 10 times a week.
And you can help us out in the office with your skill sets and things like that. And then on the resources side, obviously we’re a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. And so we basically depend on monetary donations to continue to grow and expand. We do have operations that allow us to organically grow in terms of having the operations covered by earned revenue. So any donations that people make are contributing directly to the growth, which is really why we have been able to expand so quickly over the past few years.
So for example, last year we doubled. The year before that we quintupled. So we were able to do this because we have the kind of model that we can continue to be able to be sustainable. And then on the contact side, we are an organization that works with a lot of different parties, restaurants, catering companies, farms, wholesalers, retailers. There are so many different food businesses, food-related organizations. There’s food waste everywhere, places that people don’t even think about like stadiums, fashion shoots, photo shoots. It’s just literally everywhere. It’s not just the restaurants and things like that. So contacts that people have to these people that we can basically set up a relationship and make it really easy to donate their food is ideal.
And obviously, on the homeless shelter side, if people have contacts to places where we can partner with to distribute the food, that’s a huge help as well. So lots of ways. But I would say number one, just volunteer time. Go onto our website, sign up online.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: It’s so fun. You meet really cool people.
ROBERT LEE: Yeah. Great way to meet people.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: It really is, yeah. We have a question over here.
QUESTION-AND-ANSWER SESSION
AUDIENCE: Hi. So I think the work you guys do is amazing, and also it’s in an area I don’t know that much about. So I learned a lot today. Thank you. I kind of had a question around food insecurity is not a problem like medicine or something, where a person needs a one-time treatment and then you’ve fixed them. You need food every single day. And so it is a structural problem. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the stuff you mentioned earlier about, do cities have programs where they do some food waste pickups and stuff for shelters already? Or is that an area where there is room for you to expand from the volunteer and nonprofit side to policy advocacy at all?
ROBERT LEE: Yeah. That’s a really great question. There’s a bunch of different levels to that question. But in terms of what RLC is doing to help with the food insecurity issue, as I mentioned, food insecurity, and poverty in general, is a really complex issue. And nutrition is just one piece of the problem. And food waste is going to help contribute to the overall solution to that problem. And the way we see it is the amount of money that we can save the homeless shelters from buying food, they can use that money to have much more long-term solutions like job skills training, shelter, and basic needs and things like that. And we see ourselves as part of the solution to that problem.
So in terms of policy and things like that, we’re really excited about making sure that food rescue becomes more and more mainstream, and hopefully even required in the future, maybe, similar to what France is doing and things like that. But it seems like that’s a bit further away, especially with current events. But it seems like policy is something that’s really important to make this a requirement, to make this at least much more mainstream across food business as a whole. So hopefully that answers both questions.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Question over here?
AUDIENCE: Hey. Thank you for coming out today.
ROBERT LEE: Of course.
AUDIENCE: Obviously you’re founded here in New York and based here. You’re talking about expanding to other cities and whatnot. If somebody wanted to start this same kind of program in any other city, and still go under your same brand and be part of your organization and your resources, how would we do that? Do you have franchising opportunities or things?
ROBERT LEE: Yeah. Basically I guess it’s kind of like franchising, but it’s for a nonprofit. But it’s the same type of process. We have a branch application process that you go through. Happy to give out that information. The number one way is to go onto our website and contact us about the opportunity, or email us at info@rescuingleftovercuisine.org. And essentially it’s just kind of to create a branch in any area, you just need to have a certain number of people that are dedicated to the cause to grow the branch and things like that.
But yes, we require help from people that are local to understand the local environment, and do the research of what exists and what’s working, what’s not working in that specific area because the worst thing that we can do is duplicate effort that’s already happening. And we did a ton of research in the beginning to make sure that we weren’t duplicating efforts, we were targeting that niche market. And so we would basically figure out that together.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: I’m curious. You mentioned that what sets you apart from others is that you have this technology component. Is there a bigger goal for the technology of — what? What does that look like?
ROBERT LEE: Yeah. There’s so much we can do. Currently it’s a web application. And it’s code on Ruby on Rails, and we’re trying to push towards a progressive web application, which I think, actually, is a Google thing. But what we would love to do is make this a more mobile app type of situation that uses location settings, that uses push notifications and things like that. Right now we’re relying on texts and emails and things like that. But push notifications and location settings would be huge because as we scale, as we have more and more restaurants and pickups, that kind of randomly, logistically in terms of sheer number of volunteers and sheer number of pickups that are happening, there are going to be more opportunities of people calling out or not going to be able to make the event and things like that. And if we had the mobile capability to basically say, hey, you’re in the area, and have a push notification that goes and asks those people to basically cover that event, that would be a huge game changer.
And there’s so many other things we want to do with the technology out there. There is also the whole transportation industry right now is going through the automated transportation system going on. And one of the things that we want to, and we’re excited about trying to pilot, is figuring out how that kind of automated driver situation, or drone situation, can be applied to food rescue because it totally can, and it could be a great solution to applying technology to age-old issues. So yeah, there’s so many exciting things. Yeah. There is great potential there.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: So in a perfect world, no food is wasted. What happens to RLC?
ROBERT LEE: Well, see, that’s the thing I think because — I’ve always struggled with that. I think it’s also because of my background working at JP Morgan and for profit. I think when I went to the nonprofit space, it was difficult to have the right KPI. And I mentioned that number of partners was most important. And one of the reasons why we consciously decided to go with a volunteer-driven model was so that we can scale up and down as needed. If the restaurant starts at 120 pounds, we can have 10 volunteers carrying 12 pounds each. But then if it goes down to 40 pounds and they’re able to reduce it on site, then we can just bring four volunteers.
And so the way we see it is we basically can use whatever we have at our disposal in terms of volunteers to accommodate whatever capacity is required. But we’re not reliant on it. We’re not looking to have a lot of pounds of food so that we can pare employees. We want to be able to remain nimble and actually solve the problem rather than perpetuating it.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Cool. Any other questions? All right. Well, if you have one call to action or one thing you’d like to leave with, and also if you could remind everyone of the website.
ROBERT LEE: Yes, of course. So yeah, the number one thing is going onto our website at rescuingleftovercuisine.org/calendar, and signing up for your first pickup. It’s a really great way to check us out, go on to a delivery and figure out what we do.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: All day every day.
ROBERT LEE: All day every day. Seven days a week. The video said, I think, 10:00 to midnight. Now we do pretty much like 8:00 AM to 2:00 AM. So no excuse.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Yeah. It’s 30 minutes. Yeah.
ROBERT LEE: But yeah, it’s really great. It’s a really great way to help out.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Robert, thank you for coming.
ROBERT LEE: Thank you so much for having me.
LAUREN LEBEOUF: Awesome!
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