Every week in the United States roughly 80 million pounds of food is thrown away by restaurants, hotels, farms and grocery stores. Not spoiled food. Food that is perfectly safe and nutritious but does not meet cosmetic standards, arrived in surplus or passed an arbitrary sell-by date. Meanwhile millions of people in the same cities where that food is discarded do not have reliable access to enough to eat.
The distance between the dumpster and the hungry family is often measured in blocks not miles.
Joseph Gitler looked at that gap in Israel and decided it was unacceptable. Leket Israel now rescues and redistributes food at a scale that feeds 400,000 people every week. Surplus produce becomes packaged meals. Hotel banquet leftovers reach families the same day. The logistics required to make that happen reliably and with dignity are genuinely extraordinary.
This conversation is about how he built it and what it would take to replicate it.
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