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360 Eats helps cut down on wasted food to help those in need of meal
Dan Matics reports
OLDSMAR, Fla. - Most people don’t think about what happens to all the food restaurants don’t cook, or grocery stores don’t sell.
While seeing dumpster divers searching for food during his travels in Australia, Cameron Macleish returned home to the Tampa Bay area to learn of the tons of perfectly good food that’s tossed out every day.
"It hit me in a way that something has never hit me before, it was actually realizing that our food system is completely broken," Cameron said.
He was moved to start a non-profit called "360 Eats."
"We reroute food that would otherwise go to waste to people in need, in the form of nutritious gourmet meals," he said.
The non-profit goes to restaurants, farms, distributors and grocery stores to collect donated food before it goes bad, and before it’s sent to a dumpster.
"There’s definitely a difference between an expiration date and a sell by date," Cameron said.
Every week they are given 800 to 1,000 pounds of food and serve 150 people in need. It’s also a family effort with Cameron’s mom Ellen Macleish serving as the executive chef.
"I was hooked,… I was working as a sous' chef at a big hotel, and I was like – this is what I’m meant to do," she said.
The nonprofit, right now, can only do so much – they are trying to expand and need to purchase a refrigerated truck to feed more people with perfectly good food, that would otherwise be thrown away.
If you’d like to help the non-profit grow, you can donate food or funds on their website.