InsideLouisville, where we introduce you to the people, places and things that make up Kentucky's largest city.

This week we go inside Feed Louisville.

Now, you probably know Louisville has a vibrant restaurant scene, but we also have a problem with hunger.

Well, Feed Louisville is an organization trying to bridge that gap.

Taking unused food from local restaurants and redistributing it to the people who need it.

Reducing hunger and food waste.

It's an idea that started in response to the Covid 19 pandemic.

Since then, the idea has expanded into Zest Kitchen, a place where chefs create healthy to go meals that help fund the Feed Louisville mission.

We'll learn more about the mission from its creator.

But first, Christy Dutton takes us inside the kitchen, where it all happens.

>> In a city where food insecurity continues to affect thousands of families, one Louisville kitchen is making a powerful impact one meal at a time.

>> People always think the reason people are going hungry is because there's just not enough to go around.

[MUSIC] And that is absolutely not true.

>> Chef Kelly is one of the Louisville secret ingredients.

[MUSIC] >> We've cooked down some greens and some onions, and our handy dandy tilts.

>> Preventing food from being wasted.

>> About 200 pounds of chicken tenders donated yesterday.

>> And getting it into the hands of those who need it most.

>> 40% of all perfectly viable food ends up in the landfill every year.

It makes absolutely no sense for anyone to go hungry because there's not a shortage of food.

There's a shortage of access to food.

>> Feed Louisville bridges that gap.

Operating as both a food rescue center and hunger relief kitchen.

>> We're here to rescue as much food as we can.

The more food we rescue, the more people we feed each day.

>> Up to 1000 meals a day are prepared, packed and delivered to shelters, outreach programs, and community centers.

>> They have about 30 residents right now, so we send them 60 meals each day.

>> Most ingredients are donated by retail partners and grocery stores, along with surplus food from several local restaurants and caterers.

>> Everyone hates having leftover food and not knowing what to do with it.

We fill that gap.

We'll take it all in.

If you bring me a pan of mac and cheese, a pan of mashed potatoes, I can easily turn that around and send it back out to the community.

We're reinvesting all of this into the people that we serve.

>> Inside the kitchen, volunteers work alongside professional chefs, transforming donated food into fresh, high quality meals for people experiencing homelessness and food insecurity.

[MUSIC] >> Today, we're prepping 28 cases of cauliflower.

It's about 400 pounds worth.

All of that would have gone in the landfill.

It's all perfectly good.

It's just surplus.

[MUSIC] >> And they rise to the challenge of turning bulk donations into delicious creations.

>> You know, the thing about having classically trained chefs in the kitchen, you know, we're used to doing scratch cooking.

We can make just about anything.

>> But Feed.

Louisville's impact doesn't stop with rescued food.

[MUSIC] Inside the same kitchen, another program called Zest helps fund that mission in a different way.

>> We have a little closet called the Zest closet where we keep all our stuff.

>> Unlike meals made from rescued ingredients, Zest head chef Emily is part of a team that creates fresh, plant based packaged dishes using produce from local farms.

>> We make everything from scratch.

[MUSIC] We're recipe developing like collaboratively and just keeping a really tight eye on everything to make sure that it kind of meets the parameters and the ideals that we have for Zest about the kind of food we want to make.

>> Which are carefully crafted vegetarian or vegan cuisine free of dairy, soy, and gluten.

[MUSIC] Those meals pull inspiration from around the world while staying rooted in what's fresh and local.

>> And then, just like processing a lot of vegetables, making spice blends, making sauces, we make our molé in-house.

[MUSIC] We make a harissa paste, which is like a Moroccan chili paste.

>> Seasonality drives the menu of Zest with an emphasis on produce from Kentucky farmers.

>> It's really based in that, like what's in season in Kentucky right now, because that's where we are.

You know, we want to use the vegetables that are at their peak in a given time and that our farmers are producing so that we can support them.

>> Zest meals are sold at local businesses, and proceeds from every purchase goes right back into feed.

Louisville's work covering costs and expanding the number of meals they can provide to neighbors in need.

>> Everything that they make and that they sell all the proceeds come back to help me purchase things like butter or oil or pasta, things that we don't commonly get donated.

>> So whether it's rescuing surplus food or creating something entirely new, it all comes back to the same goal.

From chopping vegetables to packing meals.

Every action inside the Feed Louisville kitchen reflects one shared commitment making sure nobody in Louisville goes hungry.

For InsideLouisville, I'm Christie Dutton.

[MUSIC] >> Rhona Kamar is the founder and executive director of Feed Louisville.

And wow, we just got a look there inside the kitchen.

It's a busy place.

>> It is.

You were there on a really great day.

Lots of things going on.

>> It is.

It's so cool to see everything that's happening there and I want.

I want you to go back, though, to the beginning and tell us the origins of this.

>> Yes.

Feed Louisville started very accidentally.

You know, we started in response to the pandemic in March of 2020.

My original co-founder and I ran into each other in a little church kitchen where I was renting space, and he works with the unhoused community.

And he said, you know, this pandemic thing is going to mean that people living on the streets will not have access to hot food.

So I was running a catering company and I said, let me help.

What do you need?

And I called some girlfriends in the restaurant industry and said, let's cook for this guy for a couple of weeks.

That's what we thought this would be.

And now we're six years later and we're still going.

>> Yeah.

Well, and, you know, thinking about that time, though, restaurants were struggling too.

Yes.

So for you all to step up and offer to, to help in this way, when you all as an organization are, are struggling, is, is really impactful.

>> It is.

And I think that's the beauty of how we started and how we continue.

We really are an extension of the hospitality industry here in Louisville.

You know, within a couple of months of us making that first leap into this, we had 16 restaurants cooking with us.

So one by one word of mouth, they joined the cause.

And in the beginning they were cooking meals from scratch in their kitchens while we were in our kitchen, cooking meals from scratch every day.

So we are definitely very connected to chefs and restaurants and caterers and farmers and, you know, people who love to cook for people really understand that hunger is an emergency.

It's yeah.

It's critical.

>> Yeah.

And people I think people know or are starting to understand Louisville is a foodie community.

We have an amazing talent with chefs and restaurants here.

And so talk about how Louisville itself and that community that you all have plays into what you all are doing at Feed Louisville.

>> Yes.

Well, you're right.

Louisville is a food town.

We have incredible talent in this community.

We have an incredible, you know, community of growers as well, farmers, which they play a huge role in this.

But, you know, I really think that hospitality is very connected to hunger relief, which is what we do.

You know, if you're a person who loves to cook for others, then, as I said, you understand that hunger is an emergency, whether that's your customer at the door who's waiting for their reservation and they're a little grumpy, or it's a person who's living on the street, you know, there's this urgency to it.

And so people who who cook for others just have, I think, big hearts and want to be able to give back.

And that's what we really saw.

You know, when we started this, we didn't set out for this to be a hospitality sort of community project, but we had just incredible response.

And the thing is, as you said, a lot of these restaurants and caterers were really suffering themselves at that time.

And I think people, when they're suffering on their own, that's when they have more compassion for others.

And they wanted to do something.

Everybody wanted to do something to help.

>> Yeah.

It is an amazing origin story, but since then, how it has developed is a story in and of itself as well.

So tell me how you went from just this idea of helping people through the pandemic to where you are now.

>> Yes.

You know, we have built Feed Louisville and we've evolved to where we are today, one step at a time.

We've put one foot in front of the other.

We didn't have a big strategy.

We didn't have this laid out plan.

We just responded initially.

And then as we went along, things would open up, doors would open, we would see where the needs are.

And that really started, you know, the sort of next step for us was around food rescue, you know, because originally, as I said, we had all these restaurants making meals from scratch for us.

But after several months, we realized a lot of these farmers and caterers and others who were donating their sort of surplus food, we realized that, oh, this is there's a need for this.

There's a need for someone, some agency to take this food and, and do something with it.

So food rescue or food recovery became this sort of second mission of ours.

And now we really work at the intersection of those two things.

So that was a part of the evolution.

And we stayed in that 500 square foot kitchen for three years, a little longer than we were really should have.

>> Growing out.

>> Of it.

We grew out of it.

And then we found an amazing kitchen.

The former Dare to Care Kitchen in Butchertown.

We moved there in 23 and that allowed us.

It's an 8000 square foot space, so that has allowed us to really increase our partnerships.

We we are still partners with our original street outreach team, which is how we started, but we also have 24 plus other human service agencies or grassroots organizations who serve the community in a variety of ways.

Some of them are still street outreach, but we have our transitional housing partners, our domestic violence partners, mental health, substance use.

So we've really been able to increase our impact by having this additional space.

>> Wow.

Well, it does make sense.

You've got surplus leftover food and and you've got people who are hungry.

And so it seems like a really simple idea.

But the logistics behind making it from point A to point B, I'm sure are, are a lot more complicated than it sounds.

So explain that process or the logistics of the organization.

How does it work?

>> Yes, it is a logistical feat every day, but we have the right people and our team, you know, our our culinary team are made up of former restaurant chefs.

So these are all, you know, professionals who could be working and have worked in Louisville's best restaurants.

And so they understand, one, how to work with this crazy array of ingredients that come in every day so they can make something of it every day.

And then just on the logistics side for picking up, we have two full time drivers out in the streets, you know, six days a week.

We have volunteer drivers.

So when any of our food rescue partners call us and say, I have something for you, we go and pick it up.

So it's a at this point, it's a well-oiled machine.

And I think what really makes it successful is everybody on our team is really motivated to do this work every day, and each person on this team is right where they're supposed to be.

They're bringing the right skill set and the right mindset to the work.

And that that goes a long way.

>> Yeah.

I feel like anybody who has worked in a kitchen environment can probably do anything because it's such a, such a intense environment.

>> It is intense.

We the work is itself, but our kitchen, I think, is just a beautiful space.

We have some really lovely people who have built this culture that is harmonious.

And you know, when you're cooking to for other people, it's just the motivation a lot of times is love, right?

So when you have that environment, it's, it's, it makes it a really nice for everyone.

I will say it is hard work.

And I tell my restaurant friends now who I'll say, okay, imagine that you are running your restaurant, you're making seven, 800 meals a day.

You don't know what the ingredients are every day you're making your menu daily, and you're training a whole new staff every day.

Because in addition to our staff, we have a good, you know, 20, 30 volunteers in our kitchen a day doing this work.

So it's quite challenging.

But you know, when you have the right people, you can do anything.

>> Yeah.

And it, and it's, it's worth it in the end.

It's worth it.

Yeah.

And so, so explain it to Houts.

Zest kitchen is a part of this and what that is.

>> Zest.

Yes, that is our social enterprise program.

We had the opportunity at the end of 23.

We, we had the chance to apply for a grant that would allow us to test an idea of, of some of a project we could do that would earn revenue for the organization.

So nonprofits, you know, always raising money, it's a part of what we do.

And one of the things that we hear funders say more and more these days is we like to see organizations who are doing something to create their own sustainability.

So because we had, you know, a kitchen and we have a culinary expertise, we said, let's create a healthy grab and go line of meals that we can sell in the community and use it as a, you know, as a fundraiser for our work.

So we won that first round of funding.

We tested the idea for a year and Zest was born from that.

And then we won the second round of funding the second year.

So that allowed us to continue building it.

And I'm happy to say that last year we started to be able to actually bring in money for the organization.

>> So wow.

>> That's.

Yeah.

And it really helps to connect the community to what we do.

I mean, we, you know, the Zest is really integrated into our mission in terms of food access and health equity and also farmers.

We're adding a culinary training program this year, which we will integrate into the Zest team as well.

So it goes across our mission in some ways, but it really helps the community who might not understand what we do.

It helps them to have this way of supporting that.

Also, you know, it's helping themselves, but also helping the community.

>> And so these are meals that you can find and buy everywhere.

Yes.

Right.

>> We have now ten different retail partners.

We just added Pauls Fruit Market recently.

You can find them at Rainbow Blossom, Billion Cup Coffee, Fuentes coffee, Whirling Tiger locals.

I mean, they're it's all on our website.

>> I'm curious to your origin story.

And as you were a chef at Ramsi's Cafe on the World.

And what what made this a passion project for you?

>> You know, I feel like everything I've done in my life led me to this.

You know, it's strange how life turns out like that.

I didn't set out to do this.

I would have never.

I think if we had drawn this on paper, we would have been scared.

We would have never done it.

But because it just one step at a time.

I come from I grew up in rural Kentucky on a farm.

My family are farmers and I, of course didn't appreciate that when I was young.

I couldn't wait to move to the big city, and I have a degree in journalism.

But then I married someone who opened a restaurant and kind of I always was playing in the kitchen and creating dishes and just experimenting.

And little by little I got more involved in the business and started intentionally developing, you know, menu items.

And then I sort of evolved into this career as a chef.

And that's what after my ex-husband and I divorced, I left the business and started my own company.

That's when, you know, all of this sort of came together and Feed Louisville was born.

>> So it is a time now when farmers are struggling.

And so this explain how this is helping that community.

>> Yes.

You know, we've been very fortunate from day one.

We've had so many farmers donating their surplus food, which we appreciate so much because we know the value of that food.

It is such a I always say that farmers are heroes.

It's such a courageous profession.

And yes, most of our farmers are struggling and we're losing a lot of our farmers, you know, the younger generation are not wanting to to go into this work.

So we what we do is we raise money to try to pay our farmers as much as possible.

So going back to Zest, we use a lot of farm food in those mills.

I will note that we don't use any rescued ingredients in Zest.

Those are all purchased ingredients, and we just, you know, we're trying to do everything we can to further support our farm partners and also to bring attention to how important farmers are, not just to hunger relief.

I mean, I think people would be amazed if they knew how much our local farmers and growers support the hunger relief efforts around this community, not just us, but others, but also just so in in addition to just feeding all of us through the markets or the grocery stores or the restaurants or whatever.

So we got to give a lot of love to our farmers.

>> Yeah.

Otherwise this food would end up in a landfill.

Yeah.

So, so the importance of this is twofold.

Threefold.

>> Yes.

That's right.

We, you know, the data shows that up to 40% of food produced in the US goes into the landfill never being touched, not being eaten, still good food.

So and I remember when I was a caterer at Ramsi's Cafe, you know, we didn't have a lot of waste.

We were a seven day a week restaurant, so we were always in production.

And I think that's true for a lot of restaurants.

But when you're catering or you have a big event or you close on Saturday and you don't open until Tuesday, you may find yourself with extra food.

We would try to take food to, you know, different soup kitchens or shelters, but if you've got a pan of pasta or a case of broccoli or whatever it is, you know, it's not always it doesn't fit in that model.

It's not always really useful.

So that's really the niche that we fill.

And one of the things we do every year, this will be our third year.

We really like to highlight the work of our restaurants and our food partners.

And so we do a campaign during the holidays called the No waste, No Hunger Campaign.

And we do it in partnership with all of our restaurants.

So, you know, it'll be a, you know, the restaurant will give 10% on a particular night or we'll do a POS, you know, roundup, you know, when you have your check and that we, we put a lot of attention on the work they do to say thank you for the commitment that you make because it is a commitment, you know, if you're a restaurant or you're even a, you know, like I think about Haymarket or some of our grocery partners where, you know, Rainbow Blossom, where they have trained their staff to recognize food that's just on that edge, that's still viable.

Maybe the customer doesn't want it or they can't sell it for some reason, but it's still good.

And so it takes an effort on their part to, you know, make space in the walk in for that, train the staff, and then have to us coming in to pick it up or schedule pickups.

So we really appreciate that and we want to bring attention to it.

So the No waste, No Hunger campaign does that around the holidays every year.

>> What is the future for Feed, Louisville and Zest?

And it sounds like you always kind of have new things coming in, in the works.

So where do you see this organization?

What's the vision for the future?

>> Well, we are very focused on what we do, so we're not really trying to invent anything new.

We are, you know, we know that this that what we're doing works and we are working.

So that is, you know, feeding people, redistributing, you know, redistributing resources.

We're excited about the Fresh program to be able to get some fresh fruits and vegetables to low and no access areas and help to remove some of those barriers that store owners have to make food available.

So these programs, as I said, they're all integrated into this one kitchen.

So we're really focused on what we do.

So it's not really about inventing anything new at this point.

It's about securing what we're doing.

So always creating sustainability.

That's where Zest comes in and doing it better every day and serving more people.

That's really what's on our minds is how can we do more of this?

>> It seems like it could be a model for something to happen in other communities.

What do you think other communities could learn from what you all are doing here?

>> Yes, it's a good point.

We have had other communities approach us about, you know, supporting them and replicating this model.

I think what's unique about what Feed Louisville does, there's certainly other organizations doing food rescue and doing hunger relief and making meals.

Having professional chefs at the center of this work is critical, and it's what makes us unique.

And there's a few organizations around the country doing something similar, but not not that many.

So we're certainly starting to have those conversations.

And we're doing work internally to gear up to be able to really share this information with others around the country and excited to be able to do that.

You know, any community that has, you know, food producers and farmers, people who need food and somebody in the middle willing to make the connection can do this work at our core, our heart.

We are a hunger relief organization.

You know, the chefs and I talk about it.

If everything else went away, that is what we do and will continue to do.

But because we have this one kitchen and one expertise and a distribution system, we're able to add in other things like Zest, it's all operating out of the same kitchen.

And, you know, it's we just we're starting another program called Fresh, where we'll be distributing wholesale fruits and vegetables to West End corner stores to help increase access.

So as we've grown these different programs and we look at what we do, again, it's just this hub.

Our kitchen is this hub for the community.

And we have all of these sort of spokes.

We have our farmers and our restaurant partners.

We have our community feeding partners, our volunteer partners, and then our funding partners.

It's just one big, you know, community effort every day.

>> You can watch and share this episode.

Find it online at ket.org/insidelouisville.

You can also go behind the scenes and see extras with our guests.

When you follow us on social media, you can find us on Instagram at KETinLOU.

Thanks for spending a little time getting to know Louisville.

I hope we'll see you here next time.

Until then, make it a great week.