Rescuing Leftover Cuisine (RLC) is a food rescue nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating food waste and hunger. We arrange pickups of leftover food and deliver it to local human service agencies (homeless shelters, soup kitchens, etc.). RLC started in New York City but has since expanded to 11 different cities. Dallas became the 12th.
I didn’t start a branch here just because. RLC wants to be a true solution, and I wasn’t interested in duplicating efforts or furthering the problem even more. After looking into the numbers and researching (as of 2019), there were some staggering numbers :
A single restaurant can waste anywhere from 25,000-75,000 pounds of food in a year. And..
Dallas metroplex has a little less than 14,000 restaurants. Taking the minimum amount of trash a restaurant might produce (25,000) and multiplying it by a rough 14,000…that’s nearly 350 million pounds of food going straight to the trash.
So I couldn’t sit idly by. We couldn’t sit idly by.
Since launching the campaign late September 2019, there’s been so much support and it’s been humbling to see people of all backgrounds, ethnicities, and ages joining forces to fight these causes. We hope to grow RLC Dallas’ services through our amazing network of donors, recipients, and volunteers and to help change this city together.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in this journey so far, tackling these issues is not a one-person journey. They’re issues that are going to require all of us to solve - as a community. Become a food donor, a volunteer, or share your story with us. We hope you keep up with us!
Instagram: instagram.com/rlc.dallas
Thanks for reading,
Mimi Chong
Dallas Branch Head, 2019
Photo by Daniel from uponarriving