Episode 138: Combating hunger and reducing food waste – with Jasmine Crowe, Founder and CEO of Goodr

Jasmine Crowe is an award-winning social entrepreneur, TED Speaker, and leader who is working to make the world a better place one cause at a time. In 2017, after years of feeding people experiencing homelessness from her own kitchen, she launched Goodr, a sustainable waste management company that leverages technology to combat hunger and reduce food waste. She has been featured on CNBC, Oprah Magazine, Inc., Forbes, Fast Company, the NY Times, and was named by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top 100 influential female founders.

Under her direction, Goodr has redirected over 12 million pounds of surplus food from restaurants, event centers, airports, and businesses to the millions of people who are food insecure. Goodr clients include SAP, Turner Broadcasting, Hartsfield Jackson Airport, Six Flags Over Georgia, and many more.

During this episode, you will hear Jasmine talk about:

• What makes Goodr different from a food pantry
• How Goodr works with large venues and local non-profits to distribute food to people who are food insecure
• How Goodr pivoted its business during the pandemic
• The free grocery store that Goodr launched inside of Ronald McNair Middle School in Atlanta, Georgia
• What inspired her to write her brand new children’s book, Everybody Eats

For more information, check out goodr.co and follow Goodr on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Check out the Everybody Eats website at everybodyeatsbook.com and order your copy of the book!

Subscribe to the FREE Beyond 6 Seconds newsletter for early access to my latest podcast episodes!

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Hello, and welcome to the Beyond 6 Seconds podcast. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel. And on today’s episode, I’m so excited to be speaking with Jasmine Crowe. She is an award-winning social entrepreneur, TED speaker and leader who’s working to make the world a better place one cause at a time. In 2017, after years of feeding people experiencing homelessness from her own kitchen, she launched Goodr, a sustainable waste management company that leverages technology to combat hunger and reduce food waste. She’s been featured on CNBC, Oprah Magazine, Inc., Forbes, Fast Company, the New York Times, and was named by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top 100 influential female founders. Under her direction, Goodr has redirected over 12 million pounds of surplus food from restaurants, event centers, airports, and businesses, to the millions of people who are food insecure. Jasmine, welcome to the podcast.

Jasmine Crowe: Thank you guys so much for having me.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. I’m so excited to learn more about the origins of Goodr and just all of the amazing work that you’ve been doing in the space to combat hunger in in our country.

So how did you become interested in the issues of hunger and food insecurity in the first place?

Jasmine Crowe: You know, I get that question so often. Honestly, I was driving through downtown Atlanta when I first relocated here in 2013, and I just saw hundreds of people that were experiencing homelessness and living on the streets.

And something really moved me in that moment. And I went home and I posted it on Facebook. Like, Hey, next weekend, I’m going out, I’m going to start this feeding initiative. You know, if you want to come and join me and volunteer. And I started and just never stopped, it just was something. I think I saw a quote years ago, that’s like, feeding people and giving people food is like an expression of love.

And I really thought like this is a way to just show love to people. And it just, it stuck with me for forever. And, and now it’s just, I think it was like an opportunity for me to really meet my purpose.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow, that’s wonderful. And you were saying that you were working on these initiatives since you relocated to Atlanta. And you were at one point, or for many years actually, were doing like pop-up restaurants on a regular basis for people, is that right?

Jasmine Crowe: That’s exactly what I was doing. So I started that in 2013 when I moved to Atlanta, but again, I took those all over the country.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. Oh, that is awesome. You know, I, I guess with people who may be at least slightly familiar with food insecurity in the United States, you know, we have the concepts of food pantries and even may have been participating in food drives from time to time.

And you participated in them as well, but you were kind of finding that maybe there were limitations to that, or just more that you could do. So maybe if you could share a little bit about how the work that you do compares to some of the more standard or traditional things that have been done in the United States to combat food insecurity?

Jasmine Crowe: Yeah, I definitely think one of the big things that’s a big differentiator with Goodr is that we measure our, our I guess, giving if you will, based on actual meals and not on pounds. And so most people are like, oh, you know, we donated 50 million pounds of food or over 200 million pounds of food last year. Where Goodr’s going to say, these are the meals that we were able to provide these, this number of families. We also focus really largely on dignity. So I think that’s a big thing for us is we want to give people a dignified experience. Too often, when you are food insecure, you’re already very shameful and there’s a lot of pride that goes into that.

So if you come to an event ,you want to treat people kindly. You know, one of my team members was just telling me, we were doing one of our pop-up grocery stores in LA last week. And she said, A woman came up and she was so grateful that we had produce, but more so that we were nice to her. She was like, so often when we go to these things, people are just treating you like you’re nothing and you’re nobody, and you guys were kind to me.

So it’s, I think it’s about dignity. It’s about treating people the way we would want to be treated. It’s about asking people, you know, do you prefer dairy milk, almond milk or oat milk? Are you vegan? Would you like seafood? Are you allergic to anything? The simple questions that so often at food giveaways and food distributions, no one asks.

It’s just like, Hey, here’s this food that we have to give and that’s it. And I think a lot of people have that misconception. I always talk about even having to educate with my mom, you know, years ago. When I was feeding on the street, she would say things like, oh, you know, they’re homeless. She can give them anything.

And I had to say, that’s not the case. And I’ve had to say that to friends. And they always are grateful to me now. Cause they’re like, Jasmine, you really checked me and educated me in that moment. But that idea of just because people are homeless or just because people are in need, they should just be, you know, be grateful for anything that we give them, and I don’t think that that’s how it should be.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And that’s wonderful really focusing on the aspect of human dignity, as well as providing a full meal, because I understand that in a food pantry, as you said, a lot of times, it’s just whatever they have. And I think a lot of the things that people donate, you know, you’re missing those things.

You’re missing fresh produce or you’re missing meat and protein, or the more perishable items. So you don’t necessarily get balanced meals, but it sounds like you’re trying to provide more of those full meals to people as well. And Goodr itself, the concept is really interesting because it’s, you know, in the intro we described it as kind of managing food waste and I think it hearkens to the fact that it’s not necessarily that we don’t have enough food in this country. It’s just that we, we don’t distribute it to everyone who needs it and we waste so much food. So how did you kind of get the idea to look into the whole concept of food waste and kind of trying to manage that and kind of get the food distribution out to the people who needed it?

Jasmine Crowe: Well, yeah, I mean, the video, as you know, as you mentioned from one of my pop-up grocery stores actually went viral on Facebook. And I was reading one time through all of the comments and people were saying, this is so amazing, which restaurants donated the food? And the truth was, nobody: I was couponing, price matching, cooking all this food myself.

And so then of course I Googled like, you know, what happens to excess food at the end of the night from restaurants. And I stumbled across food waste, and I’m really blown away with how much food is going to waste in this country while so many people are going hungry. And I think that’s what alternately gave me the idea, because I saw that so much food was going to waste and I saw that that was, you know, just a big issue.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. And from there, how did you kind of in building the business, know which types of organizations, or I guess the different parties in, in the whole food distribution system? So did you just start going out to restaurants and asking them to, or arranging agreements to get their extra food at the end of each night? And, and how did you wind up approaching that and putting it together?

Jasmine Crowe: I mean without giving all of the details away, I would say, you know, it definitely was a discovery process. One thing for sure, that people may not know or would be surprised to learn about Goodr, that a lot of our customers in fact, are not restaurants.

You know, we really don’t have a ton of restaurants that are actually, that are customers, because what we found through that process is that they didn’t have the most waste. So we really focus where there’s a lot of waste in one location. And so our customers on the, on the contrary are usually large scale venues, whom for they have a ton of waste that we can get and give to people in need.

So we’ve started to focus on the larger venues. And at first of course, we were talking to restaurants, we were talking to anybody, and then we were like hey, this isn’t the way to do it. You know, this is not who has the food. We realized that who ultimately had the food and who could really benefit from our services were large scale venues. So stadiums, arenas, airports, convention centers, that’s where we started to see the opportunity.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that totally makes sense. And then how do you typically distribute the food? Do, do you do it through the pop-up restaurants or other storefronts? Other venues?

Jasmine Crowe: Yeah, we have a direct to need program. So as soon as food comes in for requests, it gets immediately delivered to our network of non-profits.

Carolyn Kiel: And you know, you started with food insecurity and really starting to address that in Atlanta, you said when you, when you had relocated there. But now you have more of a network where you’re focusing more broadly. So in what kinds of communities do you usually focus Goodr’s activities?

Jasmine Crowe: I think everywhere. I mean, we’re everywhere where there is the food insecurities issue. So I don’t think that we are focusing on one area versus the other. I think we’re just constantly focused on serving as many people as possible.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. And I understand you, you also work with food in schools. Cause I know that’s been a huge issue, especially, you know, with the pandemic and kids not being able to go to school in person. And I know a lot of places, that’s where a lot of kids wind up eating their breakfast and their lunches sometimes. So I imagine Goodr would be partnered with schools as well.

Jasmine Crowe: Yeah. I mean, we’ve been working with schools largely since 2020, so just start starting last year. And it was the exact reason why you said, you know, that this is where kids are getting their meals from. A lot of the children often don’t know where those next meals are coming from. And so we’re able to kind of come in and be the conduit to getting food to children that need it most.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And I would imagine that the pandemic in 2020…well, I guess it changed almost how everybody was doing business unless you’re completely fully remote, but did it change a lot of the tactics that Goodr was taking in terms of distributing and getting food to people experiencing food insecurity?

Jasmine Crowe: Yeah, definitely. We definitely made some changes. We had to, you know, pivot. We, we saw a lot of the businesses that we were serving go under. So I think that that made a lot of changes for us have to happen. And so we definitely made them and we, we started to rethink our strategies and how we begin to focus on, you know, outreach and who the customers were that we were selling to. So we saw a lot of those changes take place last year, but, you know, we pivoted to really be helpers and going back to kind of, my roots of getting food to people is, is really where, where we were and how we got started.

Carolyn Kiel: Absolutely. And so you’ve been working with Goodr I guess since, you know, or, or established it in 2017 and have been doing this work for years. What kind of feedback have you gotten from some of the people that you’ve worked with in terms of, you know, whether it’s the people that you that you serve or the partners that you work with in terms of impacts and things like that?

Jasmine Crowe: You know, I hear back from the customers that we work with, that we are really making a big difference. When you think of the kind of people that we’re serving, as I mentioned, you know, we always hear from them like, this is the greatest amount of food they received, or this is you know, we’re so grateful to have Goodr, you know, here in our city to provide this kind of food for us, or, you know, you’re helping us feed our families.

So, I mean, we hear a lot of that. And then I think the people that we work with are excited to work with us. You know, we’re doing something different and at the end of the day, we’re doing something good. You know, it’s not taking anything away from food banks or food pantries, but we think that there’s, you know, more than one solution and we just want to get, be given that same opportunity.

And, you know, we’re still the smaller of the two. You know, we’re still making less money than like a food bank or a food pantry does, but I still think we’re doing a lot.

Carolyn Kiel: Right. Yeah, that’s awesome. I think as, as much as we can do to you know, reduce waste and get that food out to people who need it is you know, definitely going to change people’s lives. And that is really, really awesome.

And I understand that, at the time we’re recording this towards the end of September 2021, you recently just launched a free grocery store in a middle school in Georgia. Is that the first grocery store, free grocery store that you’ve launched through Goodr?

Jasmine Crowe: Yes, that is correct.

Carolyn Kiel: Awesome. Yeah. Tell me about how did that come about?

Jasmine Crowe: Well, you know, we are constantly innovating and thinking of ways that we can do more. So we have been hosting our pop-up grocery stores since 2017. And we were approached by one of our clients that we’ve had the opportunity to work with in the past. And they wanted to do, you know, something for back to school.

And I just told them, like, I really would love to build, it’s been a dream of mine to build a standalone grocery store in a location in a school. And I think that this is, you know, it’ll last longer it provides great impact for, for families. And, you know, luckily enough, they were like, you know what, let’s do it. And they just said, you know, run with it. This is what our budget is, make it happen. And that’s what we did.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. That’s really cool. And it, and that grocery store really has a whole variety of items. I mean, to, you know, to the philosophy of Goodr that you want to provide full meals and just a whole wide range of things that so that people can use all of the ingredients and food from the store to make complete meals.

Jasmine Crowe: Yeah, and then this store also focused largely on kids. So we wanted to make sure, because we knew that these children were often going home and making food for their families. That was one of the things that we learned really right away when we were talking to the principal that these kids were often only kids inside of the school.

And so this was an opportunity for them to, you know, be kids still, but also do something that they’re often required to do. So being able to prepare food for their little brothers and sisters, things of that nature. So that’s, that’s where I think a lot of the uniqueness came from this store. Cause we really were focusing on, on who we were serving.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. Yeah. That’s great. So many students are relying on the schools for, for breakfast and lunch, but this is, I think the grocery store is really intended for, as you said, when the kids come home and either, you know, they have to make food for themselves and their families or, or assist with that.

So it’s really something, well, one to provide them with the third meal of dinner, which is great. And second to you know, just really give them choice and agency in what kind of food that they bring home. Because I understand they can, they can, it’s a free grocery store, so they literally can take as much as they need to, for their whole families.

Jasmine Crowe: Absolutely, it’s a hundred percent free for them and their families to use.

Carolyn Kiel: Right. That’s great. So really it’s a whole wide range of food and and all different kinds of things. It’s the first one and it’s brand new. It just launched a couple of weeks ago. Is that the type of storefront, the type of free grocery stores that you want to launch maybe in other communities around the U.S.?

Jasmine Crowe: Absolutely, that’s definitely the way that we see it. We definitely look at, that this needs to be everywhere. And so I think that’s how we’ve, we’ve began to look at it.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. Yeah, that’s great. And it’s, it really is using a lot of innovative thinking and thinking like, what are different ways that we can get food to people? And as you said, really focusing on your customers, the people who are going to receive the food and thinking about, well, who’s preparing it and what do they have at home to be able to prepare it and what do people need in order to make a, a well-balanced meal. So, yeah, that is, that is really awesome. Wow.

So, you know, you’ve been running Goodr and doing so many great things over the years that you’ve been running the company. What would you say is maybe one of the biggest challenges that you faced in either launching Goodr or continuing to to run it, and how do you address that type of challenge?

Jasmine Crowe: I think fundraising is always a challenge. I also think it’s always a challenge, you know, to kind of disrupt the norm. And I think, you know, a lot of times people, sadly like food banks and other large hunger fighting organizations, will see us as competition, when I don’t see it that way. I feel like if we’re all really in business to solve hunger and that’s ultimately what we stand on and we should work together more. But a lot of times, unfortunately, that just doesn’t happen. So it is a challenge because we sometimes have to, you know, talk to customers on, you know, why it’s okay to work with both of us. And those things, they can be hard sometimes. But I think we’re, we’re going to get past it.

Carolyn Kiel: Right. Well, that’s great. Yeah. And you’re doing so much great work already with this. So what are some of your more long-term goals for Goodr, whether it’s different types of venues to work with or, or different types of programs that you want to launch? Really anything.

Jasmine Crowe: Yeah. I think our big, big goals are just scaling. We want to be in more cities. We want to be in more locations. You know, we really want to just scale our services. I think that’s the big thing for us is getting, getting out of, you know, the United States eventually is even something that we’d like to be able to do. But yeah, I think for us, it’s really just about scaling, scaling the model to as many places as possible.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Well, that’s great. And on top of all this and all of the great work that you’re doing with your company, you also have a children’s book coming out really soon, October, called Everybody Eats. So yeah, tell me about your book and what inspired you to write it?

Jasmine Crowe: You know, I’m often asked, like, do I think that I’ll solve hunger in my lifetime? And although that’s like a hundred percent the dream, you know, honestly, I don’t know. One in eight people on this planet experience food insecurity and, or in many places even complete malnutrition.

So to to believe that I could just solve it all by myself in the next, you know, my lifetime next, let’s say 50 years. I don’t know if that’ll happen. And so when I wanted to do was to inspire the next generation to kind of pick up the charge and keep going. And, you know, hopefully if I don’t solve hunger, someone, one of these kids that reads my book may want to solve it.

Yeah, this may be something that they go on to say, like, you know what, I’m so inspired and I want to be part of this. And they’re the ones that, that ultimately go on and solve it. And if not, you know, the good thing about the book is that it’ll live for many, many years and people can read it again and again.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. That’s really awesome. I’m sure by the time this interview gets published, it’ll probably be out already. Cause I think it’s coming out October, is that right?

Jasmine Crowe: It’s October 26, so kind of late October. Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Good. Okay. Wonderful. So probably by the time this interview drops, it’ll be pretty close to that date or it may have just come out.

So yeah, that, that is really exciting. It’s exciting to be inspiring the next generation to to really take on this. Because hunger, it’s a big, it’s a big pervasive challenge, but definitely something that there’s plenty of room for people to be bringing solutions the way that you are in order to help people really combat food insecurity. Absolutely.

Jasmine Crowe: I think it’s a, win-win when, you know, it’s, there’s nothing, you know, bad about trying to solve this problem. It really is something that if we’re able to do it, it’s just a good thing.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, absolutely. Well Jasmine, thank you so much for telling me more about Goodr and, and about your book. How can people get in touch to either learn more about Goodr or to buy your book?

Jasmine Crowe: Yes. So to learn more about Goodr, visit us online at Goodr.co. So G O O D R dot C O. To learn more about the book, they can visit everybodyeatsbook.com. It’s also available on Amazon as well as Barnes and Noble and anywhere else that you buy your books. But encouraging people to still visit the website because we have a lot of resources there. So there are lesson plans, there are coloring sheets, just a lot of different things that our parents can use.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s awesome. And if there are listeners listening to this interview here today who may be experiencing food insecurity themselves, is there a way to find specific communities or sites where Goodr is active where they can go.

Jasmine Crowe: We are working on that now. So we are currently raising some funding and that’s one of the big things that we hope to build is more so just like a database right now, we just post all of our events everywhere, where we will be on social media. So like on our Facebook and our Instagram.

So that’s where people can find us now, but ultimately we are going to be building like a Goodr grocery app which just lets people know places where we’ll be and they can get alerts, and you know, register where they’re located at. And it helps us know you know, where we should concentrate and where we should be doing more. But for right now, I just encourage people to go to our social. And hopefully by next year, we’ll have our app built.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. That’s really cool. Yeah, that’d be awesome. And yeah, in the meantime, I’ll put the links to the Goodr website and social media and information about the book in the show notes so that people can, can find it and learn more about it through there.

Jasmine Crowe: Well, great. Well, thank you so much for having me and I appreciate it.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, thank you. Is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything specific that they can help or support you with regarding Goodr or the book?

Jasmine Crowe: No, you know, I just think main thing is just know that we are trying to solve a really big problem.

And I would just encourage people to be open to new ways to solve old issues, if you will. And just to encourage people to continue to support us. If you learn of a business that perhaps is wasting food, definitely let them know that Goodr is an option, and we’re here to, to help them, you know, feed more people with less.

Carolyn Kiel: Right. Wonderful. Great, thank you so much, Jasmine. It was great talking with you today.

Jasmine Crowe: No problem, thanks.

Carolyn Kiel: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help us spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend. Give us a shoutout on your social media or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of our episodes on our website and sign up for our free newsletter at www.beyond6seconds.com. Until next time.