Two Good Yogurt today announced a new food waste initiative the company has launched in partnership with Chef Marcus Samuelsson and food rescue company Full Harvest. The partnership aims to get more restaurants to cook with rescued produce in their kitchens, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.
Chef Marcus Samuelsson will lead the campaign by using produce rescued by Full Harvest at his NYC restaurant Red Rooster Harlem during Earth Week (April 19–24). The campaign will also support Two Good’s One Cup, Less Hunger initiative, which donates a portion of the proceeds from its yogurt product to City Harvest food banks.
Other restaurants are invited to email wastelessfeedmore@twogoodyogurt.com to get involved with Samuelsson’s Earth Week campaign.
“We all know that food is [a] number one reason for climate change,” Samuelsson told me over the phone recently, adding that chefs’ carbon footprints are impacted by which companies they choose to supply their ingredients and what happens to leftovers and unused parts of the food.
Roughly 1.3 billion tons of edible food goes to waste each year, and some of this is surplus produce or produce considered too “cosmetically unfit” for sale. There are many companies nowadays that rescue these unwanted food items to keep them out of landfills, including Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market. Full Harvest, however, is slightly different in that it sells directly to food businesses, rather than consumers.
The company first partnered with Two Good in December 2020 to make flavored yogurt using rescued fruits, including lemons.
Along with Samuelsson, these companies are hoping that the new initiative will familiarize more chefs with the concept of rescued food items and get more of them using the method, educating consumers in the process.
Of food waste in general, Samuelsson noted that fighting it has to be “as easy and accessible for consumers as possible.”
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