If you’re a gardener, you know this time of year is when the produce begins piling up, and sometimes, it’s hard to deal with.
“No one can eat everything they grow,” says David Collins, a community gardener on Denver’s north side.
Collins has a 10-by-15 foot plot at Venture Prep High School school and he plans to donate a significant amount of what he grows to Fresh Food Connect (freshfoodconnect.org), an app-driven vegetable donation program connecting gardeners with surplus to folks in real need of fresh produce.
Fresh Food Connect is the brainchild of Wendy Hawthorne, executive director of Groundwork Denver, Turner Wyatt, executive director of Denver Food Rescue and Rebecca Andruska, director of development and communications for Denver Urban Gardens.
Their idea was so simple, efficient and needed, this past July, Fresh Food Connect was awarded a $100,000 grant from Impact100 Metro Denver (impact100metrodenver.org).
Impact100 Metro Denver is a women’s philanthropic organization which, according to their website, seeks to “increase participation among women in local philanthropy, raise awareness of the unmet needs of nonprofits in Metro Denver, inspire members to become more involved with local charities and make a substantial and lasting impact on the long-term sustainability of our nonprofit community.”
Fresh Food Connect’s premise is simple: gardeners usually have more produce on hand than they can eat, and large tracts of North Denver have been classified as food deserts. Why not create a way to seamlessly share excess produce before it spoils?
It all comes down to an app, and thanks to that app, Fresh Food Connect is a seamless system of notification, supply and pickup.
First, gardeners sign up at freshfoodconnect.org. Vegetable pickups are Thursdays, and two days beforehand, gardeners in the program receive a notification that a pickup day is approaching. If the participating gardeners have produce to share, they leave it on their front porch. That Thursday, Fresh Food Connect’s donation gathering cyclists pick up whatever’s been left by the gardener.
Initially developed by Code for Denver (codefordenver.org), the app was subsequently improved upon by global design firm thoughtbot (thoughtbot.com).
As for which organization manages which part of the program’s operations, Hawthorne says there’s a memorandum of understanding in place which ensures the three nonprofits involved are equal partners. Denver Food Rescue is supplying the behind-the-scenes manpower and pickup equipment, Groundwork Denver brings its corps of cyclist food gatherers to the table and Denver Urban Gardens is able to deliver a network of gardeners who can produce the needed veggies.
The first $50,000 in grant money arrives this year, and the second half will be delivered at the start of the new year. For now, funds will go toward hiring a volunteer/program coordinator, potentially developing a specialized, refrigerated bike for pickups and further developing the app powering the whole operation.
Fresh Food Connect is a community affair and the purpose of the app is to allow as many growers as possible to sign up to donate.
“The more people who are using the app, the more days we potentially can pick up,” says Wyatt. “We’re trying to get it so that if you have produce on Sunday you don’t have to wait for the Thursday pickup.”
Though focused for now on the 80205 zip code, a secondary purpose of the Fresh Food Connect app is to assess interest. If a noticeable number of gardeners outside the 80205 zip code sign up, the program’s founders will consider expansion.
“Even if we can’t pick up food in your area now,” Wyatt says, “sign up and we’ll assess the demand in your market.”
“We already have several people signed up in 80207, so that might be our next expansion,” Hawthorne adds.
“If we have two gardeners every block, that means we end up with 100, 200, maybe even 300 gardeners,” says Mogharreban. “Our goal is at least 100 gardeners. We’re hoping to really ramp everything up and see how the system does with more participants.”
Fresh Food Connect ran a small pilot last August and September during the harvest season to assess their system and test logistics.
“Last pilot season there were fifteen gardeners participating,” says Nessa Mogharreban, manager of construction volunteers for Denver Urban Gardens and a master’s in public health candidate at University of Colorado-Denver. At present, Mogharreban is the resident data guru for the project.
“This season we’re blasting out our info to our network of growers in the 80205 zip code to see who can help out,” she adds.
According to Mogharreban and Hawthorne, during its 2015 pilot Fresh Food Connect collected 160 pounds from eight gardeners in three weeks.
Mogharreban hopes to be able to eventually sign up two gardeners per block. Her rough estimated need for a family of four would be about two pounds per day, making Fresh Food Connect a program that could go a long way to supplementing the diet of those in need.
“It’s a start, for sure,” she says. “Eventually we’d like to get into every neighborhood. The more gardeners we get, the more we can offer.”
According to Hawthorne, Wyatt and Mogharreban, the program will distribute to both food centers and pay-as-you-can farm stands in order to generate some revenue to cover a portion of program costs.
One cost is bike labor.
“We want to get some revenue coming in to fund the youth who are doing the bike pickups,” says Mogharreban. Fresh Food Connect aims to employ youth from Groundwork Denver to make the vegetable pickups.
As for the aim of this season’s second, larger pilot, the goal is expansion.
“If we have two gardeners every block, that means we end up with 100, 200, maybe even 300 gardeners,” says Mogharreban. “Our goal is at least 100 gardeners. We’re hoping to really ramp everything up and see how the system does with more participants.”
This year is the official launch, and if all goes well, next year should see the program expanded significantly. Last year’s pilot tested the app in its early phases, this year’s pilot tests the app against larger capacity and next year the Fresh Food Connect team hopes to be fully operational.
There’s a groundswell of momentum building. According to Wyatt, other cities are watching closely.
“We have a sister organization in the Springs called Colorado Springs Food Rescue, and right now they are investing some money in the program to make the app something they could use to administer their own region,” he says. “With their contribution, thoughtbot will be able to make the app usable in multiple regions.
“By the end of the summer there should be a Colorado Springs region, a Denver region, and Rebecca from Denver Urban Gardens, she has a friend in Portland interested in starting a Fresh Food Connect there.”
In the end, though, none of this would be possible without local gardeners who are willing to share the harvest.
“I like to feed people, I like to share food,” says Collins. “I was a waiter for five years in college, and I’ve always liked to feed people since then. I believe in the whole ‘so all may eat’ philosophy, and all this produce, it’s abundant.”
