Food Rescue US fights food waste and hunger on Long Island

If there’s one thing Dr. Anne Sacks-Berg seems to be pretty bad at, it’s taking it easy in retirement.

After retiring in late 2019 as an infectious disease doctor at Huntington Hospital, Sacks-Berg went back to work there during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

“I just couldn’t sit by and watch TV and wring my hands,” said Sacks-Berg, 72, who lives in Northport. “I felt I could be useful.”

About a year ago, Sacks-Berg put her cooking skills to use with the social action committee at Huntington’s Temple Beth El, which helps feed the hungry and homeless in the Town of Huntington.

It still didn’t feel like quite enough.

In August, she was introduced to June Ingraham, who retired last April as associate director at the American Cancer Society and also wanted to do more.

When they learned that a national nonprofit that helps feed those in need was looking for organizers in Suffolk County, they said they were up for the challenge.

I was not the type that wanted to be a quiet retiree. I wanted to continue to be challenged every day and be helping people.

- June Ingraham, Northport resident

“Food is the most basic necessity that we have in our society, and I’ve always been amazed at how difficult it can be for some people right in our midst to find food,” said Ingraham, 68, of Northport. “When I retired, I knew I was not the type that wanted to be a quiet retiree. I wanted to continue to be challenged every day and be helping people.”

Food Rescue US uses an all-volunteer model to not only feed the hungry, but also keep food waste out of landfills.

“You have basically donors in one area, you’ve got volunteers in the middle and then you have social service agencies that receive the food and distribute it immediately,” Sacks-Berg said.

Food Rescue US has enough volunteers and partner social service agencies, they said. The biggest need is for more food.

How it works

The operation is managed via an app.

“All of our volunteers have the app on their phone and there’s an alert every time there’s a rescue” available for pickup, Sacks-Berg said. “And then they can accept it or ignore it, depending on their schedule, availability, location — whatever.”

Food pickups and deliveries through Food Rescue US are called “rescues,” she said, because the food is perishable.

Volunteers do not have the means to store the food, so it must immediately be taken from the donor to the recipient, ideally within a half-hour, Sacks-Berg said. That limits what type of donors they can work with.

“We’re not driving temperature-controlled vehicles,” Sacks-Berg said. “Restaurants aren’t going to work, unless they would keep it overnight, because we’re not going to send people out at 10 at night and not have any place to take it.”

Ingraham and Sacks-Berg have gotten businesses such as bagel stores and bakeries on board. Regular donors include three Panera Bread restaurants that donate breads and baked goods, Copenhagen Bakery in Northport, Duck Island Bread Company in Huntington and Park Bake Shop in Kings Park.

“You can picture the dumpsters overflowing with the bagels at the end of the day,” Sacks-Berg said of eateries that do not attempt to give away their waste.

Duck Island philosophy

For as long as he’s been baking, Duck Island owner Bob Biancavilla said he has donated to food pantries.

“Since the community has been so supportive of my endeavor, I just want to give something back to them,” said Biancavilla, a retired homicide prosecutor in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office who opened the bakery in 2015. “I think donating to a food pantry is an important part of that.”

Biancavilla said he has repeatedly declined offers by companies that set up customer bases to purchase half-priced goods at the end of the business day.

“I’d rather give it to the food pantries,” Biancavilla said.

Western Suffolk Rescue US works with 14 food pantries and agencies in Suffolk County, including the Community Food Council, which distributes food at the Huntington train station, St. Hugh of Lincoln in Huntington Station and Huntington Tri CYA, which helps feed kids. To learn about proper food handling, the duo took a food safety course with David Sank, chief supply officer for Island Harvest.

There’s about 221,000 people on Long Island living with food insecurity.

- David Sank, chief supply officer for Island Harvest

“There’s about 221,000 people on Long Island living with food insecurity,” said Sank, noting that those figures come from a 2022 study conducted by the nonprofit Feeding America, which also showed a 58% increase over 2021. The latest census estimate said Long Island’s population was 2,904,885 in 2023.

Island Harvest distributed 18.3 million pounds of food from July 2023 through June 2024 and is on track to distribute 20 million pounds of food this year, he said.

“We’re constantly looking for new sources of food that we can rescue,” Sank said.

He addded that he’d like to enlist Sacks-Berg and Ingraham to help with deliveries for Island Harvest, which also has a food rescue program. That might become a reality. “We are very interested in helping Island Harvest,” Ingraham said. “We have very similar missions. They’re the king on Long Island: They’re the largest Feeding America food bank.”

MANY VOLUNTEERS

With some publicity in a local newspaper after the launch, Ingraham and Sacks-Berg garnered dozens of volunteers from the Huntington and Northport areas. They added more through VolunteerMatch.com, where they found others in the Port Jefferson, Stony Brook, Setauket and Lake Grove areas and now count a roster of 95 regulars.

Ingraham and Sacks-Berg worked with the organization’s national director to learn policies, tips for persuading donors and what was expected of volunteers. The pair said they also volunteered last summer for the Food Rescue US Nassau County chapter under director Madhu Minna.

Minna, who has run the Nassau chapter since 2021, said she is happy to have partners in Western Suffolk and that finding new donors can be difficult. Grocery stores, for example, often already have agreements in place with social service organizations, she said.

“The way in to finding a donor is persistence. Keep checking and talking to them and finding out what their normal operations are,” Minna said. “Sometimes finding donors is hard, because there’s a lot of activism on the Island.”

Meanwhile, the group continues to look for grocery store, hospital and business cafeterias and catering halls to partner with.

“We are looking for meaningful donors,” said Ingraham, noting that they tend to get a lot of bread products. “We’re looking for produce, dairy, meat. Those are the foods that would be most-coveted by the food pantries that we work with. Obviously, they’re the hardest things to get because they’re the most costly.”