National Conference Call Playback Number

1-641-715-3440

Access Code:  804579#

Why do we do this?  Never can resist a chance to have this heard. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot4sgVYCeas 

There is now Food Rescue “gear” on the website at FoodRescue.net  Click on “Store” to check it out.

What can God do with a flier? The Food Rescue Story.

Most of you by now want some of the details on how this started so you can perhaps use the blueprint in your area, and this will be in story form with no advice, just what happened here in Indy.

I put a flier in the box of a home in my community advertising for real estate listings in Aug. of 2007, and someone called me and said, “I’m not going to sell me home, but I am just calling to tell you you have a really good business idea”.   We spoke for awhile, and in the end he prayed for me and my business.  I had never met him before.  His name was/is Bryndon Preston, and we ended up having lunch together and became friends.  Food Rescue was not  a thought in my mind.

By now, you all know the story about my wife reading the article on Freegans, and my journey to 4 food establishments.  Once I was awarded a day from Panera bread to pick up the food, I sent an email to the outreach pastor at our church, Susie Bennett, and she gave me the name of several organizations/food banks that might have interest.   After securing a Food Bank called Third Phase in Noblesville IN, I sent an email to a few friends asking who would like to participate with me.  Many said “Yes”.  I began to request more and more days, and I just took responsibility to pick up with my family on the extra days, along with many people who were serving multiple days.  Bryndon was one who chimed in with a “yes”, saying this is what he had been looking for in terms of a way to serve the Lord with his talents.

He basically went crazy, contacting newspapers, television outlets, restaurants, and friends spreading the news of Food Rescue service opportunities.  I sat back and scheduled everything and kept track of it all.  He recruited David and Luke Baldwin to design, host, and update a website for Food Rescue, and a friend of mine named Wendy Hatch designed a wonderful logo that so many have given positive comments.  One day at 8:30 A.M., the phone rang and it was our local NBC station wanting to film a spot at 10:00 A.M. .  Off of that spot we recruited 30 volunteers, one of which was a chapter president, Alison, for the South side of Indianapolis.  Still haven’t met Alison, which is one of the amazing things about Food Rescue.   Along the way a friend of mine named DJ Humphrey went in and recruited Big Apple Bagels completely on his own.  “Thanks DJ, now I need 30 more volunteers was my thought at the time” , but God provided the volunteers pretty quickly.   At one point I had to consider how much food we are picking up, and when I added it all up it was nuts, and I began to consider the hyper growth we had and how crazy easy this was to do.  So, I started asking my national contact at Panera to tell me where they had trouble finding people to serve, meaning what cities, and I just started googling food pantries, churches, and organizations with a copy/paste boilerplate email.  Then I started posting on Craigslist under “Community”  and “Volunteers”, and then everything silliness really began.  A television in Arlington called me out of the blue for an interview, and I asked how they heard about Food Rescue, and they said, “we Googled you”.

Some friends told me I needed to start having people write down their stories and post them on the website, and that I needed to start “blogging”.  I said, “Start what?”  I didn’t know a blog from a frog.  Still don’t really, but I did it anyway.   One day my phone rang and it was a Food Rescue volunteer who I had never met named Jon Duch.  His message to me was simple:  “Dude, you are running all of this out of a hotmail account.  You can’t do that!”  I said, “Why?”  He told me why, but I don’t remember the answer, all I know was that he worked for some Email software marketing company and that he was very convincing in his argument, even if I did not understand it.  So, I said, “what am I supposed to do then?”  He told me he wanted to get some software donated from his CEO Scott Dorsey, so that I could wake up and enter this century basically.  He and his friend at Exact Target Darrel Grissom began to work on some platforms for me to work out of, and they scheduled a meeting for me to meet their CEO. 

The meeting went well, and Scott Dorsey, the CEO of Exact Target became a key supporter of Food Rescue.  Along the way I lost my job for the second time in a 16 month period, all the while Food Rescue was becoming a monster.   If I spent 5 minutes working on it, that 5 minutes meant 10 minutes more work later.  It was like pouring gasoline on a fire.  I taught school before going into real estate, and I  had and interview in the school system that I worked for 9 years.  The superintendent of schools, the director of education, and several area principals were my recommendations for the position, and I did not even make the final 3, and yet Food Rescue continued to grow at an alarming rate, so much that I completely stopped developing Indianapolis, just to keep my head above water.

On July 11th, 2008, I formed Food Rescue Inc and registered with the State of Indiana to become a not for profit business, and I committed myself to this mission full time, and am currently being supported by 12 families/corporations on a monthly basis.  Grace Community Church, my home church in Noblesville has embraced Food Rescue as a “Frontline Ministry”, which led to a video being played in 4 services 10 days ago, and 155 families signed up to serve.   The week before I had taped an interview with a nationally syndicated radio program called K Love with 3 million listeners that ran intermittently last week, and Food Rescue has had 72 inquiries to date on how to start a Food Rescue chapter from all around the country, as our 14 chapter presidents have done.  To date we have well over 500 volunteers, and are well over a million dollars of annually scheduled retail food rescues, ALL of which was being thrown away until Food Rescue volunteers stepped in to intervene.

We are 25% of the way toward fully funding the Executive Director position for Food Rescue, and there are really very few other expenses.  If you would consider being a family or corporate sponsor of Food Rescue to feed people in need in our country, please email me at jw@foodrescue.net and I would be glad to answer any questions.

God bless,
John Williamson

Food Rescue National Conference Call

Thursday at 8:30 P. M. Indianapolis Time  http://24timezones.com/us_map/usa_time.htm

218-339-4399

Access Code:  804579#

Previous post has lengthy comments for a National inquiry Disussion Forum.

National Inquiry Discussion Post

OK All,

Your kind words have overwhelmed me. Let me see what I can do to assist all of you to become the hands and feet of Christ in this very simple manner.

I have really been very hands on with my chapter presidents up until now because it has been possible, but the recent exposure nationally is going to force me to use a more global method of communicating Food Rescue with the world. One of the common questions I am getting is how do you convince stores to participate, and what about liability issues. I have forms that I have sent all of you, (most of you) that show liability waivers, but some just won’t get it or won’t want to take the risk. Also, I can’t promise anybody you won’t get sued. I also can’t promise to a Starbucks in Arizona how the food will be preserved at the Arizona food bank you choose. That’s between you and the organization you donate to. The food establishments want assurances that it will be eaten almost immediately, or that it will be preserved/frozen/bagged within a reasonable time period. Only you can give those assurances. Once you do, the tax benefits and the moral issue is very compelling, plus it is dynamite PR from a community relations standpoint. Read the Good Samaritan laws put out by an organization locally in Indy called Second Helpings that I forwarded all of you.

What I have to offer all of you is the use of the Food Rescue website and brand name to establish credibility with stores and food banks. We are picking up over 200 Food Rescues each month nationally in 9 short months, and we are in a number of different states, and each chapter president is working with their own organziation that feeds people in need. THEY FOUND THE ORGANIZATIONS, not me. If you asked each one of them, they will tell you the hardest part was finding an organization to work with that is willing to deal with perishable food, almost to the point of “maddening frustration”. They all started with a Panera Bread, and I did schedule those days for them at the national level, so they never had to find an alternate food establishment to start out with. So if you don’t have a Panera bread near you, then your job is a little harder. Most franchises don’t have an “eye popping” amount of food that goes to waste, but with Paneras fresh baked daily policy, they have more than most. It must go per their policy, and they will only give to a not for profit organization. 

Also, it is possible that there is a Panera bread near you and they do not have any time slots available, meaning the food is not being thrown out.  Yea.  This is what we want.  How do you find that out?  I suggest going to the store in a non rush hour time slot like 2PM and asking to speak with the manager about their end of the day donations.  Introduce yourself as a chapter president with Food Rescue, and that you were wondering if they had any days where organizations were not picking up their end of the day donations.  They will tell you they don’t scheudle it, which is true, but they do know the answer.  Make sure they understand you are not asking them to sign you up.  They will probably ask you where you are going to take it.  That is why you must find your partner locally that will benefit.  Then ask who to contact to apply for an opportunity to pick up one of those days that is not being picked up.  If they give you the name of Ken or Ann, then I will be of great help to you.  If it is anybody else, you are on your own and must make the contact yourself.    The applications are sent online and can be sent back online. 

What if I don’t have a Panera Bread in my area?  Start somewhere else.  The owners of these franchises will make their own decisions.  All I can do is give you the contact info of the people/owners in Indianapolis where the program works like Little Caesars or Starbucks.  It most likely won’t come to that.

In short, the brand and the website and the ability to create and change a schedule is what I can offer you as a chapter president.  You have all thought of this before, now you have a tool to accomplish it.  I know that everybody would like to imagine that this was the result of a lot of work and organization, but it was really just about asking, “Who wants to help solve this problem”.  A lot of people would like to help.  You just can’t give up when the first food bank says it’s too big of a hassle or the first food establishment says they are afraid to be sued.  Just move onto the next one.   For the bread, some of my CP’s have even made buying Zip lock baggies part of the once a month service, and they just go home and bag it before they deliver it to the food bank.  We are lucky in Indy.  Our food bank does that for us.

Let’s all pray, “Bring it on God”, and see what happens.  I know He will.  I will be gone until Midnight this evening, but I will answer questions when I get home.  Post them on “Leave a commnet.”

Let’s get silly Food Rescuers

Alrighty then, to follow up with the 155 families locally to sign up this weekend, I have received 60 inquiries from the national interview with K Love and they are still pouring in.

http://klove.com/listen/?href=/broadcast/stream.aspx?href=/audio/podcasts/klovenews_podcast2150_20080819.wma&title=K-LOVE+Podcast&author=K-LOVE+Radio&onespeed=True

Here is the link:

Its the rescuing food story.

It will be on the K Love website or 5 days.

Since we all know the time frame it has taken to get 12 chapter presidents acoross the country, what on earth is about to happen next? In the words of Katherine Rohr, “Bring it on God”. Jesus looked at His twelve disciples when they were explaining his deficiencies in math when there was a crowd of 5,000 and hardly anything to eat and He said, “Bring me what you have.”

That’s all God wants from all of us, to bring Him what we have. Do we have this food? Has He given us the ability to get it? Let’s bring Him what we have, and see what He does.

Click here to watch Boomers’ Food Rescue!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D9p9EHbPv4

Click Here for more information about Food Rescue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QBmqP5mk_Y NBC FoodRescue.net Story

Free At Last

Thanks to an overwhelming response at my home church, Grace Community Church, we now have 155 families waiting to serve with Food Rescue in Indianapolis. I have always thought Food Rescue was backwards, meaning finding food and then searching for volunteers. From experience, we know the food is there, so this is a landmark day for Food Rescue to get ahead of the game.

We are very close to 3-4 genuine inquiries each week from people who want to begin chapters in their area of the country, and it would honestly take an entire day to share what is going on in other parts of the country with Food Rescue. If you click on “Story” at FoodRescue.net you will see the faces of the real people that are starting chapters in their areas. If you are reading this and you have been a participant the first 8 months, honestly try to get your mind around over 500 volunteers, and for the most part nobody has had to serve much more than once a month. Only a good God could engineer such a thing. I think that might be our biggest opportunity with Food Rescue, is to demonstrate to our country that God is good. We say we believe it, but we cower in the midst of injustice. Let me rephrase that, we “get busy” in the midst of injustice to avoid looking at it.

There are parts of the world that have no food bank to go to, yet that is our highest level of injustice related to hunger in America, that someone would have to go to a food bank. How sad.
Even in the midst of tackling this level of injustice, and in the midst of amazing stories, if I had a dime for every time somebody told me to let them know when there was something available in Carmel, (close), we could feed a lot of people with those dimes. I think we must move to the possibility that God might move us to inconvenient service to show His goodness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot4sgVYCeas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D9p9EHbPv4

John Williamson
Food Rescue Founder
jw@foodrescue.net
1-317-694-4006

Food Rescue K Love Radio Interview

Hello Food Rescuers,

Yesterday, I taped an interview with a nationally syndicated radio program regarding Food Rescue. It will air on August 20th at unspecified times during the day. The program is called K-Love, and it has 3 million listeners weekly nationwide. It is likely to play at the top of the hour multiple times during the day, and in Indianapolis it is 90.5. It was about a 5-10 minute interview, and I have been told that they will take 40 seconds of soundbites mixed with their description of Food Rescue. The entire interview will be posted on Klove.com, and I will post a link once that has happened. Food Rescue now has 10 chapter presidents around the country, and we have scheduled nearly a million dollars of “Food Rescues” since November of 2007, and we have over 300 volunteers picking up food and delivering it to people in need.

Thanks to all of you for the generous giving of your time to try to solve this silly problem of food waste in our country.

God bless,

John Williamson

Injustice

I attended the Leadership Summit today put on by Willow Creek each year, and I was struck by a few comments related to justice from the man who founded the International Justice Ministry, IJM. Gary Haugen could be making millions as an attorney, yet he has used his gifts to bring justice where there is injustice around the world instead. There are 27 million people in the world in some form of slavery, and over 60% of the people in jail have not been formally charged in other countries. With so much injustice in the world, how are victims of injustice to believe that God is good? What is Gods’ plan? We are. There is no plan B.

The title of his message was “Leadership that Matters”. He suggests we should be leading in the things that matter to God, or that leadership is wasted. He said, If you say justice is not my thing, he believes God would say, “then you are not my thing”. He raised the story of the 5 loaves and 2 fishes, and quoted Jesus as saying, “Bring me what you have”.

He said, “Jesus did not come to make us safe, He came to make us brave.”

As each of you find time to serve with Food Rescue in your part of the country, I hope the simplicity of the service falls in line with “bringing God what we have” It seemed so stupid to the disciples, but yet it was all Christ asked. I hope that this ridiculously simple thing we are doing together will allow all of us to place this small thing that we found, (food) at His feet, and that we will see the beginning of justice coming to the poor in our cities.

After seeing some of the most amazing leaders the past 2 days, I can tell you that we are barely scratching the surface of dealing with injustice with Food Rescue. Nobody will be “wrecked” emotionally serving with Food Rescue, however, along with serving, we are introducing ourselves to entry level injustice in most cases, and hopefully sensitizing the hearts of people in our community to experience and be exposed to even greater injustices that will result in action that will lead to a reduction in those injustices.

God bless all of you,

John Williamson
Food Rescue President
jw@foodrescue.net
foodrescue.net
foodrescue.wordpress.com
Tel: 317-694-4006

Where to begin?

Hello Food Rescuers,

Some of you outside of Indy have asked about my family, so I thought I would post a picture for you. My five year old tonight prayed that she wished she was God. Oh, be careful what you wish for, but I digress.

I’m not sure where to begin, but there have been a lot of developments in the last few days. Our Minneapolis chapter president was able to do some networking and found someone to begin a Food Resuce chapter in St. Paul in the Twin Cities. Our Arlington Chapter president has inspired her pastor to begin a Food Rescue chapter and a food pantry at their church, and I received an email this week from a newspaper in Herndon Virginia to do a story on what we are trying to accomplish. We have a chapter soon to start in Reston Virginia, and we are in the beginning stages of starting a chapter in Fredericksburg VA.

The Washington DC area is one of the most difficult areas for Panera Bread to find organizations to pick up and organizations to receive their end of the day donations. Minnesota was also a difficult area for them. I have simply been doing some free internet marketing to share what was accomplished in Indianapolis in 6 months. I have basically encouraged everyone to draw a 20 mile radius around their house, and put an end to food waste from one chain to start with, and people have been responding. The biggest prayer request is that my chapter presidents find food pantry partners to work with as accommodating as Third Phase is in Indy.