The FoodMesh team is united in our love for food and passion for helping organizations waste less, feed more and save money.
2022 Benefit Corporation Report
Throughout 2022, FoodMesh has been working diligently to help organizations minimize the volume of their unsalable food ending up in waste streams, and maximize the impact that food can have on their local communities.
During the year, the organizations we work with hit the incredible milestone of 30 million meals rescued. As well, more than $1 million of revenue has been shared with the charitable organizations that do the hard work of rescuing the food and redistributing it to local community members.
The impact of our work in 2022 – by the numbers
12,254,196
Meals provided
7,988,000
Food rescued (KG)
20,452,000
CO2 emissions saved (KG)
425,791
Revenue shared ($)
If it wasn’t for FoodMesh and the stores that donate their food to us, we’d be paying a fortune on food and not be able to do anything else to help people
– Tony Back, Executive Director of the Launching Pad Addiction Rehabilitation Society
Impact on employees
- Maintained daily, weekly and monthly touchpoints with the team to check in with one another on their work and wellbeing
- Ran our second annual engagement survey, to gain an understanding of how employees are doing and where the opportunities for improvement are
- Maintained a monthly ‘Coffee Culture Club’ to create space for the team to come together and share ideas on different practices FoodMesh can adopt to help build a positive, inclusive and supportive work culture
- Hosted our second annual all-staff retreat for quality in-person team building
- Provided the full team with time off to attend an Indigenous education opportunity of their choice to mark National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
- Completed a robust performance review process for the entire team
- Conducted a compensation review across the organization and made cost-of-living adjustments
- Maintained a social committee that included a summer picnic and a holiday party for the team to come together and enjoy informal social time and team building
- Introduced a home office equipment purchase policy, to ensure that team members have the necessary equipment to make their home office as safe and as comfortable as possible
- Continued the “Get to know the FoodMesh team” blog series, to help our customers and partners get to know the (amazing) people who make up our team
- Provided each employee with an end-of-year bonus and all employees received an adjustment in compensation to reflect evolving roles and inflation.
- Continued our volunteer program, providing the team with two paid days per year to volunteer with organizations in our network
Impact on customers
- Helped to generate positive media coverage about our customers and their outstanding food recovery efforts
- Celebrated our customers’ key food recovery milestones on FoodMesh’s blog and social media channels
- Brought Quality Food onto our Retail Food Recovery Program, which score 90% satisfaction with store staff
This arrangement to donate produce to Maplewood Farm is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my 45 years of working. I love to watch the kids interacting with the animals, knowing that what we’re doing is helping the animals, and helping the environment. It’s the right thing to do
– Bruce Currie, Energy and Sustainability Manager, Save-On-Foods
Impact on the environment
- We helped organizations divert 7,988 mT in 2022 and 22,378 mT since FoodMesh began
- We helped save 20,452 mT of CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere and 57,373 mT since FoodMesh began
- Updated the methodology we use to report on our impact metrics to make them as accurate as possible
- When procuring equipment, such as office furniture or laptops, we maintain a ‘nothing new’ policy – opting for reused or refurbished items first and only buying items new when absolutely necessary
- All of the events we host are strictly zero-waste
- We provide practical tips to help our online community reduce food waste at home on the FoodMesh blog and social media channels
- We are reducing CO2 emissions by promoting a remote work environment
- Our office is located near public transport hubs so that employees can commute to work by bus or train. A number of employees bike or walk to the office
- Our holiday party Secret Santa was using regifted, thrifted or homemade items only
Funds that we would otherwise be spending on food can be allocated to enriching the lives of our animals, thanks to the connections we have made with FoodMesh and its partnership with Save-on-Foods. Building these relationships is also important for creating a sustainable future for the farm
– Selina Merrick, Supervisor of North Vancouver’s Maplewood Farm
Impact on community
- We worked directly with 464 hunger-relief organizations and 223 farmers in 2022, and 1,687 indirectly
- We celebrate and promote the great work our charity partners are doing through blog posts and social media coverage on an ongoing basis
- We have shared $425,791 in revenue with hunger-relief organizations in 2022, and $1,182,906 in total since FoodMesh began
- We have helped organizations rescue the equivalent of 12,254,196 meals in 2022, and 32,796,199 meals in total since FoodMesh began
- Our team volunteered 20 hours in 2022 to hunger-relief organizations we work with, helping them in their work to get food to people that need it
- We hosted a webinar to mark Stop Food Waste Day, with a cooking with surplus food demonstration from Theresa Contois from Cedar Feast House Catering
- We hosted a webinar to help connect businesses in the Fraser Valley with solution providers to help them find alternative uses for their unsold food
- We did a spotlight series on organizations finding innovative ways to use surplus food on the FoodMesh blog
“We love the FoodMesh Marketplace because it enables us to move more food, more efficiently, to a lot more organizations”
Joel Hampson, Agency Manager, Loaves & Fishes Food Bank
Impact on governance
- We added two new industry advisors to the Board
Public benefits and disclosures
- FoodMesh is both a B Corp and a benefit corporation under British Columbia law.
- We measure out public benefit through the B Lab Impact Assessment which measures a company’s positive social impact on its stakeholders. We were certified in May 2021, and the next assessment will be in 2024.