Fighting 2 Feed

Food waste is a huge problem in this country.  Food insecurity is an even bigger problem, and growing by the day as more and more people have lost their livelihood to the pandemic.  What if you could solve both of these problems at once?   This spring, while canceled events, conferences, and parties were seeing many people scrambling to go virtual, Jiwon McCartney was scrambling to rescue all the food that wouldn’t be cooked, plated, and served as we were all forced to stay home.  With over 15 years of experience in the hotel restaurant industry, working for brands like Levy Management and Hyatt Corporation, Jiwon has developed a pipeline to bring fresh food to those in need instead of filling up dumpsters. So when St. Patty’s dinners all over Chicago were canceled, that corned beef was repurposed into fresh hot meals for churches and charities all over the Chicagoland area.

In 2014, McCartney started the organization, Fight 2 Feed, and just in this last year alone has rescued over 650,000 lbs of food and served over 55,000 hot meals.  Depending on the passion of her volunteer chefs who run their various kitchen outposts at Bella Rue in Highland Park and Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly in Chicago, the food boxes are delivered, sorted, and inspected for quality.  Then the chefs put together menus to fulfill the partnerships with various churches, charities, and food pantries, delivering hot meals straight from their kitchens.

Jiwon’s philosophy is a simple but powerful one, “if you have it, give it.  If you need it, come and get it.”  That’s why she’s often found at loading docks at the crack of dawn, hauling boxes herself that would otherwise rot away untouched.  On Sunday evenings she heads down to the cafeteria at Northwestern University in Evanston to rescue untouched meals and then redistribute them the next day.  During a snowy Tuesday in January, Fight 2 Feed partnered with Boca Loca Cantina in River North to distribute meals to anyone in the food and beverage industry who needed it, no questions asked.  With over 100 bags filled with gourmet goodies like fried chicken dinner from Alinea, Jiwon was on the phone coordinating where the leftovers would go in case they had extra, her top priority is that nothing goes to waste.

Right now, Fight 2 Feed is taking their organization to the next level, looking into partnerships and space at McCormick Place, and figuring out how to implement a sustainable business plan so that Jiwon can continue to direct her team of chefs, volunteers, and all-around awesome people to keep feeding people when food insecurity is quickly becoming the fastest-growing issue in our country.  If you head to the website you can sign-up to be a volunteer, prepping food in their various kitchens, working in their pantries in the city, cleaning, packing, delivering, breaking down boxes, or join the Bake Squad where people are dropping off freshly baked desserts for delivery daily.

When I look at what’s going on in this world, when I think about how we are almost at a year of staying home, sheltering in place, when I apply for another round of PPP loans and then the forgiveness for these loans, I’m simply in awe of people like Jiwon who are hustling to take care of their communities day and night.  During our first phone call, she told me how her body was aching from lifting all those food boxes, how her phone never stops buzzing and she doesn’t silence it since she doesn’t want to miss a single opportunity to rescue fresh food that would otherwise be thrown out and get it into her kitchens and into the hands of those who need it.  Talk about your modern-day Wonder Woman.