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Chefs lead humanitarian mission in Ukraine
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The Farm at Feed It Forward
The Feed it Forward Farm is located across 200 acres in Whitby, Ontario.
The farm from Feed It Forward plants and grows fresh produce, offering nutritious ingredients and lower the amount of processed foods. This farm allows us to not only serve meals from food that may otherwise be wasted, but to cultivate our own food and provide healthy meals that are quite literally farm to table. Not only does the farm produce food for our initiatives, but we are also in possession of many clones which we can donate to food insecure individuals so that they can grow food on their balconies, in their backyards or in shared public spaces.
Food Waste on Farms
Beyond food wastage in urban areas and cities, there is also a tremendous amount of food-waste that occurs on farms. Many farms will throw out perfectly good crops simply because they are slightly blemished. The farm at Feed It Forward is predicated upon sustainability and as such, we utilize as much of our crops as possible, meaning we waste less and feed more.
Feed It Forward Sustainability Education
Part of our educational program is to use Feed It Forward’s farmland in Whitby as a teaching opportunity about sustainability and food waste. On the farm, individuals get a hands-on approach and opportunity to plant, maintain and harvest the garden. The food grown at the farm is then distributed through our PWYC Grocery Store.
“From seed to feed, we’re planting what people need and providing for their neighbours.” – Chef Jagger Gordon
Feed It Forward is redistributing meals from MLSE added to our own and delivering approximately 3000 meals every week to the food insecure individuals in many of the most vulnerable areas of the GTA.
It’s important that Canadians understand it is not just the homeless that don’t have access to healthier food. There are other many individuals and families that live in vulnerable communities who require assistance with getting access to healthy meals on a regular basis.
The world’s first pay-what-you-can grocery store, bakery, and coffee shop opened its doors this past weekend with a marvellous turnout. This unique grocery store is one more of Chef Jagger Gordon’s, founder and operator of Feed It Forward, initiatives in helping those with food insecurities.
In its aim to be a waste-free, environmentally friendly facility, the store is initiating a Bring Your Own Container (BYOC) program. For any waste that is produced, Feed It Forward has partnered with various local programs that will either recycle or reuse their waste. The store’s interior will feature merchandising units (tables, shelves, display cabinetry) which were constructed using recycled and reclaimed materials.
With a lineup out the door on the first day of service and dedicated volunteers, the store has high hopes of continuing its success.
Five-hundred Torontonians were at the Dufferin Mall this past Sunday for the second-annual Toronto Doughnut Festival. This year, there were a dozen different doughnuts to try, including Feed It Forward’s very own creation.
Chef Jagger Gordon put together an incredibly unique grilled cheese sandwich doughnut topped with tomato-basil icing and stuffed with both American and Swiss cheese.
He also made a deconstructed blueberry doughnut with liquid nitrogen ice cream. To make the festival a little sweeter, a portion of the Toronto Doughnut Festival proceeds went towards Feed It Forward.
These funds will be supporting Feed It Forward’s latest project, the first Pay What You Can Grocery Store in Ontario which is set to host its Grand Opening June 16th!
On Sunday, April 22nd a fundraiser was held in which all proceeds went towards Feed It Forward’s first Pay What You Can Grocery Store in Ontario! The charity dinner and poker tournament raised $2,000 to benefit Feed It Forwards cause of feeding the less fortunate, raising awareness, and hopefully changing legislation concerning the shameful waste of food in our country. The evening ended with one a ‘Feed It Forward’ volunteer, Mary Jo Vradis, donating all her poking tournament winnings to our cause!
Our kids are setting the example for the future and it is time for adults to start paying attention and following suit. The Eco Team at Blantyre Public School took the remarkable initiative to reduce food waste, something we should all be more conscious about.
Canada wastes on average 873 lbs of food per person every year, this makes Canada one of the biggest wasters on the planet. In an effort to reduce these numbers in their community, the Eco Team collected unused foods throughout the lunchroom that were headed for the trash. With the gathered leftovers, the students made a loaf in which they proceeded to sell to staff throughout the school.
The Eco Team’s awe-inspiring initiative raised $10 which they donated to ‘Feed It Forward’. The children hoped to not only set an example for classmates but for the future.
Sometimes, a free lunch is just that. Sometimes, it brings up a whole lot of other ideas.
For Jagger Gordon, offering up pay-what-you-can sandwiches, soups and salad, plus dogs and burgers at Soup Bar by Feed it Forward triggers a whole conversation about food waste, marginalized food and hunger.
Located on Dundas St. W. at Bathurst St., it opened in late May and offers free or cheap meals seven days a week. The day we visited, it served Tom Yum Goong soup, daal, and a quinoa and vegetable salad. Plus deli meat sandwiches and, the latest addition, hot dogs and hamburgers.
While a huge sign reads “free,” in fact, you can drop in $2.50 or more to pay for your own lunch, or donate to someone else’s meal via tokens. Those who have no cash just toss in a token.
Gordon, a native Montrealer, grew up in Florida and served in the military. Those skills led to stints as a private detective, bodyguard and stunt actor. Lots of glamour, stars and travel, but the single dad soon realized he needed a stable career.
“I hung up my ego and went with my passion and became a chef,” says Gordon. He settled in Toronto, studied at George Brown College and soon launched his own catering company.
He kept getting gigs in commercials chopping up vegetables, pro style, or tossing pizza dough — his chef skills and comfort with the camera offered him a real niche. “That paid the bills,” he says.
As he nurtured his dual career track, he grew to despise tossing out food after catering events. In 2014, he cooked for a massive Oktoberfest outdoor event that got rained out.
Gordon froze most of the grub. Then he took it down to Trinity Bellwoods Park and hosted a free event. “That food fed 300 people that day.”
That inspired him to ask himself, “Why am I not doing this with all my food?” So, Gordon founded Feed it Forward as a nonprofit (he’s currently registering it as a charity), and set to launching projects that both fed the hungry and diverted food waste.
In late 2014, he placed a freezer at a Toronto church, connected through that organization for names of families in need, and stocked it with daily meals for eight families at a time. Feed Families rotated its recipients monthly — they used an electronic padlock to access the freezer.
To put together those 12,000 meals he made over the course of a year — which included turkey dinner for Christmas — Gordon used leftovers and so-called marginalized food. Grocery stories sell cold cuts, lettuce and tomatoes for as much as 50 per cent off, if you know when and where to look. (In his view, expiry dates are more of a marketing scheme to get people to throw out food and buy more — the food itself is usually fine.) He got donations as well.
Gordon also started offering delivered meals to people in crisis. And every Monday, he serves up lunch at Nathan Phillips Square. He’s often doing large, free food events.
A pop-up at Scadding Court in early 2017 got him speaking to staff there. He told them he wanted to do a more permanent kitchen and Market 707, which the community centre runs, would be a great fit. They agreed.
Two days later, Gordon got a call that a space had opened up. He paid the rent, called on his nephew Adam Spencley, his “number one” in the kitchen, and started shopping and cooking. Gordon connected to a large industrial bakery in the city that agreed to donate its overflow — it cooks extra to serve its numerous clients in case they need it — daily.
The Soup Bar opened May 21 and already it serves more than 150 meals a day on a budget of about $100.
Up next, Gordon is cooking for more festivals and growing organic produce at a donated farm. He plans to open a pay-what-you-can organic grocery store as early as August. And he’s got lots of other ideas.
All the while he’s juggling this project and his catering business, plus those acting gigs. He’s mastered his spiel about hunger and wasted foods, but admits he struggles to fit in finding others to share the workload and pushing the fundraising side. “I’m not good at asking for help and money,” he says.
Source
Every year in Canada, a staggering $31 billion worth of food gets thrown away, not to mention the 40 per cent of food produced in our country that ends up directly in landfills. Perfectly good food is wasted everyday, yet each day many individuals and families go to bed hungry. Needless to say, there is a gap here that needs to be addressed.”
This is where chef Jagger Gordon comes in. Gordon has identified that gap and is actively seeking to close it. What started as a desire to limit wasted food as a chef and caterer turned into a non-profit community food program with a goal to feed those that cannot always afford a nutritious meal.
Gordon’s Feed it Forward program takes unused and unsold food from restaurants and other food retailers and puts it on the table. The program initially began as a smaller initiative called Feed Families, in which Gordon and his team collected unused food from restaurants, turned it into freezer friendly meals, and delivered the meals to qualifying families on a monthly rotation.
“I started reaching out to certain restaurants, asking for their trimmings, their ends, their rotating cycle of what’s on their tables, and I started packaging that up,” explained Gordon. “And giving biweekly and weekly meals to families in crisis every day.”
After seeing the overwhelming demand for Feed Families, Gordon decided to take the program to the next level.
“I felt that there had to be a reason and a way to give back and to pay it forward, or feed it forward,” said Gordon.
With Feed it Forward, Gordon runs a similar operation to Feed Families but on a larger scale. Every Monday, Gordon and the Feed it Forward team sets up at Nathan Phillips Square and provides free, freshly cooked meals to those who are in need.
He also has a more permanent location called the Soup Bar, which runs out of a shipping container at 707 Dundas St. West. The Soup Bar is Toronto’s first subsidized pay-what-you-can restaurant.
“The Soup Bar is an amazing directive that we have for the feed it forward initiative,” said Gordon. “It gives the community more of a conscious awakening.
As part of Feed it Forward’s mandate, Gordon is also actively petitioning for the government to started a legislation that forbids restaurants and supermarkets from wasting edible food. The petition proposes following a similar model to France’s recent legislation, which states that grocery stores must donate food to local organizations that will either reuse the food or donate it to local farms for compost.
Source
http://indie88.com/local-chef-feeding-it-forward-diverting-food-from-landfills-to-those-in-need/