Banquet was founded with the mission to create a more equitable and sustainable food system. We firmly believe that none of our neighbors should be going hungry, especially when there's enough food to go around.

The idea for Banquet arose while writing an education brief for the US Senate. Struck by the impact that school breakfast and lunch made on low-income households, we decided to dig deeper into the food insecurity issues that currently face the nation. Our team realized that inflation-adjusted spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)–the largest USDA food and nutrition assistance program–increased by more than 40% in the past 3 years due to the rise in food insecurity during the COVID pandemic, but millions of families are still food-insecure. Moreover, many households facing food insecurity do not qualify for these federal nutrition programs and visit their local food banks or other food programs for extra support.

Recognizing that non-profit food programs were the foundation for feeding those in need, our team decided that the most effective way to help these individuals was to ensure that no food program was ever strapped for supplies. If we support these organizations so that they never have to turn away hungry families, we could make an enormous impact on the lives of food-insecure families.

The first part of our investigation looked at what would be the most effective way to provide food to those facing food insecurity. While standard donations are still effective at getting meals to these individuals, food rescue became apparent as the most promising for several reasons. The amount of food and money donated to organizations pales in comparison to the hundreds of billions of dollars–you read that correctly–associated with food waste that goes unrealized every year; we could recover nutritious food with greater health benefits from the roughly 30% of groceries that are thrown out annually; and food rescue prevents carbon from entering the atmosphere, combatting the 11% of greenhouse gases that are attributed to food waste. With all this in mind, an effective means of food rescue became paramount.

After reaching out to food security organizations, nonprofit leaders, and rescue experts, we realized that the issue arose from a lack of distribution—not food or eagerness to help. The programs that we spoke to were frustrated that there was so much food available to feed our neighbors, but teams could not transport the goods to the people in need. Banquet has decided to play that role to ensure these programs always have enough food.

We’ve named ourselves Banquet because everybody should have a seat at the table. Our team has expertise in technology, entrepreneurship, policy, food rescue logistics, and non-profit leadership, and we’re well-prepared to tackle the problems facing food-insecure communities today.