Every day, thousands of people go hungry in the Kansas City Area while tens of thousands pounds of food go to waste in restaurants and commercial bakeries.
But several area bakeries bag up the day’s leftovers and donate them to charities throughout Kansas City.
Baker Andrea Bastian said employees at Blue Chip Cookies and Ice Cream arrive at 7:30 a.m. each day to start baking cookies for the day. They always plan to have about 100 cookies left over to donate to Harvesters.
“It’s a good cause,” she said. “So many people just throw away their leftovers, so they might as well go to charity.”
Harvesters youth ambassador Samantha Nichols said the food bank is always in need of non-perishable food.
“Harvesters does receive perishable items [from bakeries] but there are some different steps to that process,” she said. “Harvesters does offer a food rescue program that goes around the area to places that serve food to take and deliver prepared food that has yet to be served to agencies.”
Although most shops don’t plan for donations the way Blue Chip does, Harvesters is not the only local organization receiving sugary donations from area shops.
“We almost always sell out,” Sara Baum, assistant manager at Smallcakes Cupcakery, said. “But on days that we don’t, we donate to the Ronald McDonald House. We’re just a community cupcakery so we try to give back when we can.”
TCBY owner Mary McMinn said she is willing to donate her store’s goods. She said few organizations have approached her to collect donations.
“We would embrace anybody coming forward to collect them,” she said. “But it’s very difficult to get someone to do so.”