About Food Recovery Network
Carleton student volunteers recover surplus food from campus dining halls and local retailers, transport it, and donate it to community partners such as the Community Action Center Food Shelf and Key Youth Center.
- Contacts: Dorothy Chou ’25, Jonathan Nguyen ’25, Seth Grauer ’26, Victoria Bradjan ’25, Claire Burbery ’26, Leander Quiroz ’27, Gwen Casey ’25, Savanna Blair ’26, Mariah Loehr ’26, Lucie Wolf ’26 and Ella Wiegman ’25.
- Location: Faribault, Northfield, On Campus
- Join Time: Anytime
- Commitment: Weekly
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Description:
Working together with Bon Appétit, the CCCE founded Carleton’s chapter of the national Food Recovery Network in January 2014, the first such branch in the state of Minnesota. We strive to both reduce food waste on campus and address food access problems in our surrounding community.
Student volunteers recover surplus food from both LDC and Burton dining halls five nights a week, collect upwards of 1,500 lbs of food each week from Cub Foods on Monday and Thursday morning, and often collaborate with the St. Olaf Food Recovery Network Team. Recovered food is then transported to various community partners in Northfield and Faribault, including the Community Action Center Food Shelf, the Northfield Community College Collaborative, Greenvale Community School, the Faribault Education Center, and the Key Youth Center. Through this work, Food Recovery supports numerous food access points for families that have inadequate access to nutritious meals, all the while diverting thousands of pounds of food from the landfill and forging connections between Carleton dining hall staff, students, and Rice County community members.
Sign up to volunteer on-campus or off-campus with FRN!
You can sign up for on-campus shifts recovering food from the dining halls or off-campus deliveries. Link takes you to a spreadsheet with instructions. Choose a day and location using the tabs at the bottom of the sheet, and indicate if you would like a trainer to come if it is your first shift. We also ask that all volunteers watch this food safety video from FRN national and complete this food safety quiz.
Learn more about our community partners!
Community partners include the Northfield Community Education Center, the Community Action Center, the Northfield Community College Collaborative, the Faribault Education Center, and the Key Youth Center.