Hail To Haven’s Harvest’s 10 Millionth Pound

Our area’s premier food rescue organization celebrated an eight-digit milestone with a tasty party at the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven on a humid but festive Wednesday night.

At the center of the good feeling were accolades for volunteers who collect with efficiency and deliver with dignity, like super volunteer Billy Flynn, who have helped Haven’s Harvest rescue ten million pounds of food and counting. 

Haven’s Harvest Co-Founder and Executive Director Lori Martin gave Flynn, among many others, a special shout-out of gratitude. Flynn is personally responsible, she said, over his six years of volunteering, for having moved out of the waste and into the good food stream 885,000 of those ten million pounds himself.

How many runs might that be, day in and out, rain or snow, from 7:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night from Yale’s dining halls to the senior center at East Shore and other nonprofit receiving points? 

Flynn, 56, a retired carpenter and life-long New Havener, didn’t know the number, but it was a lot.

“And if you count all the pounds that we couldn’t keep track of during Covid, maybe a million pounds,” Martin added.

In an organization with a small professional staff and a culture of family and dignified service to all that has since 2019 attracted hundreds of volunteers of all ages and backgrounds, Flynn stands out, Martin said. ​“No one else has done 10 percent!”

Wednesday’s event, which drew about 100 people under colorful tents and for quaint trolley rides along the Farm River, was part volunteer appreciation, part fundraiser.

To that end Martin announced the good news she had just heard: State Sen. and President Pro Tem Marty Looney had just phoned to tell her Haven’s Harvest now has a line in the state budget: $150,000.

That’s in addition to the recently approved $50,000 line in the city’s budget.

The six-year-old organization has a total cash budget, Martin explained, of $550,000, but that doesn’t reflect the hours involved in approximately 13,000 food ​“runs” annually such as Flynn’s, or the in-kind donations.

“We’re much more than a basic needs organization,” Martin said, at pains to explain that Flynn and the army of caring drivers do so much more than deliver the food to pantries and soup kitchens, senior centers, and churches.

“We’re economic development,” as well, she said. ​“At an estimated $5 per pound, that’s $50 million of [saved] food expenses that people have to pay their rent, buy clothes. This year we’re on track to exceed $2 million worth of recovered food by the end of 2025.”

Even the nonprofits (many of whom have events with food rescued by Haven’s Harvest) benefit in this way.

And then there’s the environmental justice aspect: All those millions of pounds of food that are rescued and go into people’s mouths mean millions of pounds of carbon dioxide prevented from going into the atmosphere.

“Food recovery [organizations] reach only 5 to 10 percent of edible food,” she said. ​“The rest is being incinerated in western Pennsylvania.”

The state budget line is, in part, in recognition of the volunteers who are doing the recovery not only in Greater New Haven but in other parts of the state like the Naugatuck Valley.

“What could we do [if the organization grew] and we had $1 million? A great deal!” Martin dreamed.

An innovator as well as a nonprofit visionary, Martin said that if Haven’s Harvest can grow and reach a level of sustainability, then staff coordinators might, for example, be positioned in other communities where the need is great. In Waterbury, for example, she suggested, and in the Valley and Hartford.

What’s needed for that growth are staffed individuals or partners with deep knowledge of their communities — the restaurants and other producers of excess food that must be re-purposed in short periods of time, along with the whole range of possible recipient nonprofits in specific areas that currently are not being reached. 

In the entire state, Martin said, there are only two food recovery organizations doing this work — her own Haven’s Harvest and Food Rescue U.S.

That means that in Connecticut alone, she estimated, 90 percent of edible food is not being recovered and all its potential benefits — going into hungry people’s mouths, reducing waste incineration’s toxic effects on the air, and serving as a driver of economic development — is not happening.

To that end, Haven’s Harvest, which now operates out of a rented warehouse on Morse Street in Hamden, has for a while been on the hunt for a hub that it might own.

It has its eye on a building in Fair Haven which might become that hub for its expansion and sustainability.

The state has invested $250,000 in a planning grant for the site, Martin said, and the purchase cost, which is about $1.6 million, needs to be raised in the future, when plans have been more specifically formulated.

The hub for the food gathering and distribution would also have, among features on the drawing board, a commercial kitchen — so, for example, the larger trays of food that are sometimes picked up could be prepared (that is, re-prepared) ​“to serve more deeply into the community, meals in smaller pieces,” Martin explained.

As much as she’s an evangelist for the practical benefits of food recovery, the values behind the enterprise are always also front and center for Martin.

“We’re very intentional about what we do,” she said. ​“It’s not charity, it’s reciprocity, and building community.

Mike Twitty, the student retention specialist at New Haven Adult Ed on Ella Grasso Boulevard, caught that spirit in his moving remarks as Martin presented him a bouquet of appreciation.

Every morning 150 students arrive early at Adult Ed and have their breakfast there, provided by food recovered by Haven’s Harvest, he explained.

And at 6 p.m., 600 other students arrive for ESL classes. ​“They come straight from work, where they often start at 6 a.m. From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and they are all hungry, and they line up for the food” recovered that day by Haven’s Harvest. ​“Thank you for being there. Let’s keep going together.”

Flynn said it’s not just rescuing the food that draws him to the work, but being with the people it reaches, watching them smile at the table where they are eating.

“Talk to your representatives,” Martin said in her thank-yous to the volunteers and supporters at Wednesday’s gathering. ​“Tell them to invest in food recovery. It gets it out of the waste stream, keeps people fed, and allows us to show up for each other. What we want to create is a loving community.”

Anisa Garcia, a Haven’s Harvest project manager who was the main organizer of the party, reported the event raised approximately $10,000.

For those interested in advancing the work of Haven’s Harvest or volunteering, here’s the site.