Startups Like Food Cowboy and CropMobster Try to Reroute Food Waste to the Hungry Serri Graslie - NPR
go to original November 4, 2013

Introduction to Food Cowboy - Technology to Fight Hunger and Food Waste (Roger Gordon)

In an alley in Northeast Washington, D.C., hundreds of pounds of produce are piled haphazardly on pallets. Mexican Fruits, a discount grocer, can't sell the fruit and vegetables inside these boxes because the food has gone soft or is lightly bruised. Some will be donated, but most boxes are destined for a large, green Dumpster nearby.

Before it gets tossed, Roger Gordon grabs one box of lightly speckled bananas. Gordon is the co-founder of Food Cowboy, a startup that's trying to redirect discarded food from Dumpsters to hunger relief groups. He's here at Mexican Fruits because he's hoping the grocer will call him the next time it has this problem.

"We want to set ourselves up as air traffic control for food," says Gordon, who's based in the Washington, D.C., area.

According to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 percent of food in the U.S. goes uneaten. And many see this wasted food as a business opportunity — from startups like Food Cowboy and CropMobster to the former president of Trader Joe's, who is opening up a market. But although food waste is an obvious problem, it's a complicated one to solve, whether you're targeting farmers, retailers or consumers.

In the retail food world, a lot of waste happens because distributors don't have time to find a home for the perishable food stores won't accept.

Read the rest at NPR

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