15 Oct Redirecting ACL Festival Food
Aside from a lot of sad fans and performers, the aftermath of a cancelled event the size of ACL has many repercussions on the event producers, the event-goers, the vendors and much more. As someone who has spent a fair amount of time thinking about food waste, food recovery and how to get food the highest and best use, I was surprised it took me 9 hours after hearing that ACL Festival was rained out on Sunday to think…."What is going to happen to all that un-served concession food?"
I rushed to the computer to look up the ACL food vendor list.
Then I started posting on Austin360, facebook and the Keep Austin Fed Volunteer Group and encouraging folks to go out to eat and support the businesses that got rained out to help them move that food as well as mitigate financial losses. I also made a point to draw attention to the other options that vendors have, namely to donate edible food via programs like Keep Austin Fed and other end uses like compost that we've spent all year educating the public about via Food Shift Austin.
For those new to the conversation, the Food Recovery Hierarchy identifies preventing food excess as the top priority, followed by feeding people and animals, then creating compost, biofuels and other by-products.
Initially my greater concern was for businesses like Daily Juice that require large amounts of produce to create their product, and anyone serving pre-prepped food would seem more worrisome. But according to one of our Food Shift Austin team members Chef Roger Chan, "Sysco will most likely buy back unused inventory. The food recovery opportunity will mostly be the food already prepped and/or precooked for sales. At large events vendors usually will cook up pounds and pounds of meats which can not be re-sold, thus making it perfect for redirection from the dumpsters which is where it usually goes." I tried three times to get through the Sysco phone tree to a real person, to no avail.
I did talk with a manager at Hat Creek Burgers who said they had purchased a bunch of chicken breasts for the festival and when the event was called off they put it in a freezer. Since they have a policy of not serving food that has been frozen, they were evaluating options to place it, but I feel confident it won't go in the trash.
At first I thought that vendors with frozen inventory, like Amy's Ice Cream and the GoodPop would have the least problems with such a plan change. But my dad went down to Zilker Park today to do a little reconnaissance and found out their refrigeration went out last night and they had to dump some ice cream : ( They did have a bag with some energy bars that they gave him to donate. Apparently most of the food disposition decisions were made early Monday morning as most everything was cleared out by noon
Between my explorations that started on Sunday night and continued on a Monday holiday (read no school/child care) I have not been able to turn up much definitive.
Ummmmm… in order to find a photo for this blog I did an internet search for "ACL rained out food" and turned up this great article by Addie Broyles and Matthew Odam called "ACL food vendors scrambling after cancellation". Guess I should have started there.
I will continue to ask questions and see if I can piece together an even better picture of what really happened. Members of Food Shift Austin will also be contacting all of these businesses to let them know about ongoing food donation and composting options and ask them to participate in our Food Establishment Survey.
No Comments