Fighting Hunger and Food Waste Together

Misfits Market announces a $200,000 grant to Sharing Excess to help rescue and redistribute fresh produce from New York City’s Hunts Point Produce Market

In our vision of a more sustainable food system, everyone has access to nutritious food and all food goes to its highest outcome. But that’s not yet reality. In 2022, 44 million people experienced food insecurity in the U.S., while roughly 38% of food went unsold or uneaten, according to ReFED.

The good news: it’s possible to tackle both problems at once and this important work is done daily by our network of philanthropic partners. That includes Sharing Excess, a national food rescue and distribution nonprofit organization and longtime partner of Misfits Market.

Today, we’re expanding our partnership with a $200,000 grant to help Sharing Excess continue its food rescue and distribution operations in Hunts Point Produce Market, the largest produce market in the world by volume. This donation will help increase community engagement and fuel the distribution of 10 million pounds of nutritious food in NYC communities annually.

United In Food Access and Rescue

Like Misfits Market, Sharing Excess is dedicated to reducing food waste and making it easier for people to get fresh, nutritious food. The similarities don’t end there: both of our organizations were also founded in Philadelphia in 2018. Around the same time Misfits Market founder Abhi Ramesh started delivering mystery boxes of funny-looking produce around Philly, Evan Ehlers, then a college student at Drexel University, realized he had 50 meals left on his college dining account that he knew he wouldn’t be able to use. So he swiped them out and drove around Philadelphia to give the meals away to anyone who needed them. This grassroots beginning led to partnering with grocery stores, restaurants, wholesalers, and farmers to rescue and redistribute food throughout Pennsylvania.

A year later, Sharing Excess and Misfits Market began teaming up to distribute free rescued produce to Drexel students, and our partnership expanded during COVID as we shipped boxes of produce to food-insecure students. Over the years, Sharing Excess has redistributed 770,785 pounds of food from Misfits Market’s East Coast warehouses that was left over after packing our boxes, making a significant impact on food waste reduction and community support.

As Misfits Market has expanded nationally and rescued more than 210 million pounds of food since 2018, Sharing Excess has also grown into a national organization that’s rescued 60+ million pounds of food since its founding. They’ve perfect last-mile logistics and use technology like an open-source mobile app to streamline excess food delivery to communities before it goes to waste in 19 states.

In 2021, Sharing Excess pioneered a new way to rescue food, setting up operations in the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market to sort through tens of thousands of pounds of produce daily, pack up the edible produce, and redistribute it to local food banks and organizations. In three short years, they’ve reduced food waste there by 60%, recused 22 million pounds of food, and transformed the PWPM into the largest food donor in Philadelphia. This success got the folks at Sharing Excess thinking: what if you took the same rescue model from the City of Brotherly Love and applied it to the city that never sleeps?

Saving Fresh Produce in The Big Apple

If you’ve ever had a meal at a New York City restaurant, it’s likely the produce on your plate passed through the Hunts Point Produce Market in The Bronx. This vast operation is the largest produce-specific terminal market in the world—and Hunts Point Produce Market also experiences millions of pounds of food loss every year.. Tens of millions of dollars worth of perfectly edible produce goes to waste every year at the market due to minimal bruising, misshapen product, transportation delays, or just surplus stock. And that’s not to mention the resources and carbon emissions that go into growing and transporting the food in the first place.

At the same time, more than 1.3 million New Yorkers face food insecurity, and rates of food insecurity have only grown post-pandemic. Sharing Excess saw an opportunity to address this by launching an on-site food rescue operation at the Hunts Point Produce Market in late 2023. It’s a small but bustling operation that uses a single container for sorting and gleaning, a refrigerated trailer for storage, and trucks to transport food for community outreach. What makes it so special is the dedicated team that gleans and curates a diverse selection of produce, not just donation staples like potatoes and onions, that nourishes and delights the community. Each day, pallets of tropical fruits, leafy greens, juicy berries, and so much more make their way to a nearby food bank or food pantry for distribution to clients.

As last mile experts, the folks at Sharing Excess function as the superheroes that cover transportation, coordination, and delivery to 60 New York organizations across 25 zip codes. To date, Sharing Excess has rescued and distributed more than 7 million pounds of fresh and healthy produce just from the Hunts Point location. In 2024 alone, 500,000 New Yorkers have been served with the food that Sharing Excess rescued in The Bronx. Their impact is essential—95% of organizations Sharing Excess works with said Sharing Excess is their primary source of fresh produce. What’s more, Sharing Excess focuses on the core values of human compassion, equity and social justice, innovation and entrepreneurship, and sustainable development. It’s essential work we’re honored to support alongside our customers.