Cultivate Food Rescue breaks ground on new storage facility

News Release

SOUTH BEND — Cultivate Food Rescue broke ground on its new 22,000 square-foot cold storage facility Tuesday, Aug. 1.

The not-for-profit, based in South Bend, serves food insecure children and adults all over St. Joseph, Elkhart and Marshall Counties. By partnering with local grocery stores, restaurants and food retailers, they are able to save food that would have gone to waste.

The expansion into cold storage is predicted to broaden Cultivate’s reach to over 200 regional food pantries and social service agencies. Now, the organization will be able to rescue 19 million pounds of perishable foods per year, growing their capacity by 19 times what they can do currently.

Cultivate stated in a press release that, according to data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. wastes about 40%, or 133 million pounds, of the food it produces. Since Cultivate was created, it has saved over 4.7 million pounds of food and served 800,000 meals to students, neighbors and food pantry partners. With the expansion, they can help provide nearly two meals a day to every food insecure child and one meal a day to 62% of food insecure adults and children in poverty within Cultivate’s service area.

Fort Wayne’s DJ Construction and Tippmann group are working on the cold storage facility, which is expected to be finished by the summer of 2024.

Right now, Cultivate is putting on a $10 million capital campaign to help fund the project. To learn more, visit here.