The delicious potential of rescuing wasted food | Jasmine Crowe-Houston

Summary

Podcast Title: TED Talks Daily
Episode: The Delicious Potential of Rescuing Wasted Food | Jasmine Crowe-Houston
Release Date: May 14, 2025
Host: Elise Hu

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of TED Talks Daily, host Elise Hu converses with Jasmine Crowe-Houston, the innovative founder of Goodr, a company dedicated to combating food waste and alleviating hunger across the United States. Jasmine shares her journey, the challenges she faced, and the impactful solutions Goodr offers to create a more sustainable and equitable food system.

1. Jasmine's Journey and the Birth of Goodr

(03:29 - 06:25)

Elise Hu begins by highlighting Jasmine's transition from creating a pop-up restaurant for the homeless in Atlanta to founding Goodr. Jasmine recounts an enlightening experience where distributing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches revealed the complexities of serving diverse populations, including those with allergies and dietary restrictions. This realization spurred her to establish a more dignified and effective method of providing food to those in need.

“I thought we just made a thousand peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and nuts are one of the number one allergies… I created this pop-up restaurant where I would rent tables and chairs and linens and print out menus and let people feel like they were dining at a restaurant.”
(03:57)

2. The Scale of Food Waste and Its Implications

(07:35 - 09:17)

Jasmine delves into the alarming statistics of food waste in the United States, emphasizing that 30 to 40% of all food produced ends up in landfills. She compares the volume of wasted food to being the third-largest country in terms of food waste, highlighting both the economic burden—nearly 2% of the US GDP—and the environmental impact.

“If food waste itself was a country, it would be the third largest country in the world… nearly 2% of all US GDP we spend on food that, you know, we never even eat.”
(07:47)

3. Goodr’s Dual Approach: Diverting Waste and Combating Hunger

(06:25 - 09:38)

Goodr operates on a two-sided business model aimed at addressing both food waste and hunger. On one side, the company assists businesses in diverting edible food from landfills to nonprofits, providing detailed data on environmental benefits such as reduced CO2 emissions and carbon footprints. On the other side, Goodr focuses on creating sustainable solutions like free grocery stores in schools and meal delivery systems, especially highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic when they ensured students received food while learning remotely.

“We have a two-sided business model as it relates to food waste… we are delivering it directly to people in need while giving all of our clients back a lot of data.”
(06:32)

4. Overcoming Corporate Hesitance and Scaling Operations

(09:56 - 12:10)

Jasmine explains the initial challenges in persuading corporations to participate in food donation programs, primarily due to concerns about liability and logistical complexities. Goodr mitigates these concerns by handling liability issues, providing necessary packaging materials, and offering a seamless platform for tracking donations. This approach not only fulfills corporate sustainability pledges but also ensures genuine impact, effectively countering practices like greenwashing.

“A lot of times it's trying to hold people accountable. It’s about keeping their promises.”
(11:53)

Goodr has successfully scaled operations to 15 states and 26 markets by leveraging existing infrastructure and technology, avoiding the need for a large fleet of drivers.

5. Integrating Technology for Efficient Logistics

(12:32 - 15:26)

Technology plays a crucial role in Goodr’s operations. Their proprietary app allows businesses to easily track and manage excess food donations by calculating the weight and value of donated items. This data is then used to provide detailed reports on environmental impacts, such as carbon footprint reduction, and to ensure transparency and accountability in the donation process.

“Our platform is calculating the approximate weight of those items… and once that food gets picked up, a non-profit receives it.”
(12:49)

Jasmine also highlights the use of the shared economy by utilizing external drivers instead of maintaining their own fleet, enhancing flexibility and scalability.

6. Choosing a B Corp Structure for Greater Impact

(15:27 - 17:03)

Jasmine discusses the strategic decision to operate as a B Corporation rather than a traditional nonprofit. This structure allows Goodr to scale more effectively and engage more deeply with businesses, facilitating better integration and impact. The B Corp status supports Goodr’s commitment to a triple bottom line—prioritizing people, planet, and profit.

“We are a triple bottom line. We’re for people, we’re for planet, and we are for profit.”
(16:41)

Conclusion

Jasmine Crowe-Houston’s work with Goodr exemplifies a transformative approach to tackling the intertwined issues of food waste and hunger. By bridging the gap between excess food and those in need through innovative logistics and technology, Goodr not only feeds the hungry but also significantly reduces environmental impact. Jasmine’s insights underscore the importance of accountability, sustainable business practices, and the potential for scalable solutions to create a more equitable and sustainable food system.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• “I thought we just made a thousand peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and nuts are one of the number one allergies…”
  (03:57)

• “If food waste itself was a country, it would be the third largest country in the world… nearly 2% of all US GDP we spend on food that, you know, we never even eat.”
  (07:47)

• “We have a two-sided business model as it relates to food waste… we are delivering it directly to people in need while giving all of our clients back a lot of data.”
  (06:32)

• “A lot of times it's trying to hold people accountable. It’s about keeping their promises.”
  (11:53)

• “Our platform is calculating the approximate weight of those items… and once that food gets picked up, a non-profit receives it.”
  (12:49)

• “We are a triple bottom line. We’re for people, we’re for planet, and we are for profit.”
  (16:41)

---

Jasmine Crowe-Houston’s dedication through Goodr offers a beacon of hope and a model for sustainable, impactful change in addressing some of the most pressing issues of our time.

Transcript

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@Simplisafe.Com Ted Talks Daily that's S I M P L I safe.com Ted Talks Daily there's no safe like SimpliSafe. You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host Elise Hu. Here's a wild stat, 30 to 40% of food that is produced in the US ends up in the landfills. It's especially upsetting that this much food is tossed knowing how many people are experiencing hunger and food insecurity. In a 2024 conversation, social entrepreneur Jasmine Crow, Houston shares why hunger actually isn't an issue of scarcity, but rather an issue of logistics. She speaks with journalist and TED Radio Hour host Minouche Zomorodi about helping people get access to food in a way that's a major step in the fight against both hunger and climate change. Enjoy.

[Elise Hu]

Okay, so I have been following Jasmine's career. She gave a TED Talk at TED.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Women five years ago in December. Yeah. Which is crazy.

[Elise Hu]

And I interviewed you three years ago and now here you are and so much has happened.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Yes.

[Elise Hu]

You are more of a behind the scenes person for people who don't know. Gooder, explain your story, how you came to be so aware of food waste and what you are doing.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

I started Goodr here in Atlanta. I had created for people experiencing homelessness a pop up restaurant. And the concept really came to me after feeding and working with a volunteer group and making all these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, going out to the streets and handing them out and a man telling me, oh, I'm allergic to nuts. And I thought we just made a thousand peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and nuts are one of the number one allergies. And it made me think that dignity was lost and how we are serving our unhoused and how we're serving people in need and that too often we think, well, they're homeless or they're hungry, take this and be happy. Forgetting the fact that they could have religious convictions, dietary restrictions, or they could plain out be allergic. And so I created this pop up restaurant where I would rent tables and chairs and linens and print out menus and let people feel like they were dining at a restaurant. And a video went viral and it was a 15 second clip. I'll never forget it because it was before Instagram allowed you to have, you know, minute videos, longer videos. So. So I woke up one morning really afraid because I had never, I mean, obviously gone viral. And I was like, what's going on on Facebook? I need to get off this app. It was like one of those things. And so I'm reading through millions of views and comments and what people kept asking me was, who donated the food? And the truth was, nobody. I was couponing, price matching. I would start cooking on Friday, Saturday, go out and feed about three to 500 people every Sunday. And so I was like, I need to get this food donated. I went to Google fully expecting to get a list of all the businesses that are going to donate food to to help me keep feeding people. And I would live happily ever after. And instead I found about food waste. And I read an 86 page report by the Harvard Food Law Policy Group. And as I'm reading through this at this point now into the wee hours of the morning, I'm getting upset because I'm thinking about the people that are lined up at 9am for my 3pm feeding every Sunday because they know that there's not a lot of people that come out to feed during the week. They were living at the former Metro Atlanta Peach Tree Homeless Task Force. It was the only shelter in the city that would allow families to come. And that's so important. A lot of you all don't know, but if you are a homeless mother, you have a 15 year old son, you guys gotta go to two different shelters.

[Elise Hu]

Oh, right.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

And so I was feeding all these people, I learned about food waste and I became upset and I was like, I'm gonna solve this. I'm gonna do something to your point, better and gooder. And that's what got me started.

[Elise Hu]

So explain what Goodr does now because from going to peanut butter sandwiches. Yes, it's impressive.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

So now we have a two sided business model as it relates to food waste. We can help a business keep all of their food out of landfill. If it's edible, we're getting it to people in need that are people like me, feeding people. Shelters, safe houses, domestic violence centers, churches. One of our largest partners is communities and schools. We feed thousands of kids every week. So we keep edible food from going to landfill and we are delivering it directly to people in need while giving all of our clients back a lot of data. How many pounds they're keeping out of the landfill, what does this mean for their CO2 emissions and their carbon footprint. And then we have a hunger side of our business, which was birthed during the pandemic, that really focuses on creating sustainable solutions to solve hunger. We build free grocery stores inside of schools. We have 28 right now. Around the country. We have grocery and meal delivery. During the height of the pandemic, Goodr delivered all the meals to Atlanta public school students that got free breakfast and lunch. But we're learning virtually so we made sure that they got food at home. So we really are solving hunger and food waste.

[Elise Hu]

So can you just explain, can we give her. Yeah. Part of me is like 40%. That's such a crazy statistic.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

It's a crazy number.

[Elise Hu]

Like why when you talk to the companies, nonprofits, like what is happening that there is so much food available but going nowhere?

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

I mean, it's a startling number. If food waste itself was a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. So it's a lot of food. So you think about that. I mean, between the production, the transportation and the disposal, nearly 2% of all US GDP we spend on food that, you know, we never even eat. And I think what it is is that the old guard is we've always done it this way. We've always thrown it away and this is how we do it. And of course, when I was first starting, people were like, oh well, if someone gets sick and we'll get sued. And so Goodr said, hey, we'll take on all of that onus. We provide the packaging materials, we provide the labels. When nonprofits rece the food, it comes from Goodr, they sign hold harmless agreements. I have a multi million dollar liability insurance because the airport was my first customer and we were driving on Tarmax and I ended up having to get insurance that I wasn't quite ready for. But it definitely helped the business. And even with all of that, people will still say, well, we're just afraid, or our lawyers just can't wrap their heads around it. Or, you know, we're just, we're going to compost everything, even if it's edible, which I'm still happier that it's not going into landfill if it gets composted. You know, of course, Gooder, we deliver to hog farms. We turn. We have anaerobic digesters. We'll take food too. So we want to keep it at a landfill. But feeding hungry people is not a priority for too many people in this country. And that's a problem.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, yeah. Tomorrow I am coming to see one of your facilities.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

I'm so excited about that. You're going to love it.

[Elise Hu]

From what I understand, it's bread day, so bread is going to be coming in from all different places and then you are going to be sorting it. Some of it goes, as you said, to compost if it's not for human consumption.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Or to a hog farm.

[Elise Hu]

Or to a hog farm, which is amazing.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Or a cattle farm. I think we have cattle farms now. Cattle farm.

[Elise Hu]

Yes, you do. I've seen that. And, and then some will go, of course to people, to schools, to hospitals, or wherever else. But talk to me more from the corporate Side?

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Yeah.

[Elise Hu]

How did you get people to come on board with this? Like, did something have to change when it comes to laws and forcing companies to do this, Is it because they want to be able to say to their customers, like, we are a sustainable company?

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Like, so what I used to do is I would go to the websites of the big hotel groups, the big food groups, and I would look at their sustainability reports. This is how I got the airport as a customer. And I went to them and I said, hey, you know, 27% of. I'm looking at your waste tonnage, and 27% of this, according to the EPA, is food. So you guys wasted 25 million meals. Now, I have no idea if that was true, but I looked at their sustainability report. I used the EPA's calculation that food was the number one thing in landfill. And I was able to go back to the Atlanta airport and say, listen, you guys are sitting in College Park. The children in this city are living in poverty, and all this food is going to waste. And this doesn't make any sense. And so the airport became one of our first large scale customers. And you think of all of the grab and go food items that goes to waste every single night if it's not for gooder. And now that's why I need to be in more airports. But getting that before it goes to waste and getting it to Gateway center before Georgia Workforce, their third shift is coming out and building half of this city. A lot of men that are trying to transition out of homelessness, them getting that meal, putting this food in our grocery stores, and families taking it home for free. This is what. This is what it does. So I think so much. It was really about making people keep their promises, you know, like, hey, I won't say the hotel group, but they had on their website, and this is someone I'm trying to pitch now. And I was like, hey, you guys said you're gonna cut food waste in half by 2025. This is in two months. Like, why have you guys not started? Like, what are. What's the process? So a lot of times it's trying to hold Jasmine. I want her holding all these companies accountable. It's about keeping the. I mean, people need to keep. I think we live for the announcement and we as people don't follow up.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

On the delivery. Right? Because for someone to invest millions, I mean, I don't even know how much a Super bowl commercial cost, but I've heard it's like a million dollars per 30 seconds. I could be wrong. But to invest 2 to 3 million dollars and not follow up on your.

[Elise Hu]

Promise, that's called greenwashing.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Yes. And that's a lot of that.

[Elise Hu]

That's a lot. So you're not just in Atlanta, though, now, you've grown a lot.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Yes. So we are in 15 states, 26 markets. So this is where we have food moving and being donated, and then we have grocery stores in about five states, maybe six or seven now. But we are doing our food waste business, obviously in more locations.

[Elise Hu]

So someone was asking me, they're like, but how does, how do these companies keep track? Because it must be so random what they can get rid of.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Yeah.

[Elise Hu]

And I said, well, actually there's an app for that. There is. Which at first, when I first heard about your Apple, I was like, that seems weird, but actually it is really the linchpin in making this.

[Sponsor Voice]

Right.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Right. Like, that's really what I saw. So when. And shout out to Jackie Chu. She runs TED Atlanta, tedx Atlanta. And she convinced me to do my first tedx talk. And when I was talking to her about it, she was like, oh, I get it. It's a logistics problem. And I was like, you get it? And that's, that's really what it is. Hunger is not an issue of scarcity. And we hear about that right there. We need to produce more food. We need to grow more food. We are wasting 40% of it. It's really about logistics. How do we connect this excess food with the millions of people that need it? Their. Their income doesn't change.

[Elise Hu]

No.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

You know, we're going to be seniors, all of us, some of us probably already are, but all of us, God willing. And once you get to that point, it doesn't matter then if toilet paper goes up, if bread is more expensive, eggs are more expensive. This is all you have to work with. So it's really about how quickly can we match it. So we inventory everything it is that they sell. We create a very easy user experience where they click on the items, tell us how many requests to pick up. We leverage the shared economy that's already out there. Meaning. And that's how we've been able to grow to a lot of different locations. We don't have to hire our own drivers. We don't have to, you know, purchase trucks and vehicles. Now we do have a couple, but what we, what we leverage is a driver that's already out there. And drivers love it. They're like, oh, my God, like, I'm feeding people, I'm getting paid to do it and they make it happen.

[Elise Hu]

Literally. Like the person, let's say I'm working at a big company and I work, you know, in, in the cafeteria area. What do I take out my phone and what do I do?

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Or it could go on point of sale system and you click on the Gooder app, your menu is already there and you're just clicking on the items that you have saying I've got 10 chicken breasts, I've got this. Our platform is calculating the approximate weight of those items. So we pull a lot of that data from U.S. food, Cisco, whoever they're ordering their food from. And then it's calculating the tax value of those items at the time of donation, which is a critical offering to our clients. And once that food gets picked up, a non profit receives it. They sign for it like they would a UPS package and a donation letter with a picture. That donation from that nonprofit automatically goes to our clients portal. So now they see everything that they've donated, the nonprofit it went to and a tax deduction receipt for what they donated. Wow.

[Elise Hu]

And the carbon that they've saved.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Y we have a corporate social responsibility impact report as well as a sustainability and it's actually I remember one of my angel investors, she sits on the board of ihg who's one of Gooder's customers. And she messaged me last year at their board meeting in London and she was like, Goodr is on the board report. Like they're literally talking about how we're cutting food waste with this company.

[Elise Hu]

They're starting to show off.

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

But they're starting to. They're starting to show. I mean, as they should. Yes. I mean it's like such a good thing. Yeah.

[Minouche Zomorodi]

Growth.

[Elise Hu]

What, what's. I mean we should be clear. You're not a nonprofit. You are a B corp. Why is that important to you? Why did you decide to go for a for profit company? Is it because that is something that you hope to scale? Where are the pros and cons?

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

There was a couple things. One, I think the nonprofit was going to be a much harder old guard to get past because everybody always donates to the food bank. It's all we ever know. We've been doing canned food drives since we were 8. Our kids are still doing it in school now and I felt like I was going to be spending a lot of time trying to gain respect in the non profit space. The biggest piece that I saw though was that businesses were already paying to throw this food away. So this was not newfound spin. They're already paying Waste Management, Republic Services, whoever their waste company is. Mind you, the waste industry is a trillion dollar industry. None of us ever say, let's just keep our trash right. Like we were like, is trash day missing? Oh my God, it's a hurricane. They didn't run today. Like, what's happening? Like, we are paying for this on a daily basis. So when I realized that, I realized that this was not going to be newfound spin for these businesses, it was going to be a better spin. So dollar for dollar, we're a little bit more expensive, but the outcome, the return on the investment for our clients is far, much greater than they would ever get from a traditional waste company. And so I do look at us as a triple bottom line. We're for people, we're for planet, and we are for profit.

[Sponsor Voice]

That was Jasmine Crow, Houston, in conversation with Minouche Somarodi at ted next in 2024. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out [e-mail] curationguidelines and that's it for today's show. Ted Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar and Tansika Sarmarnivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Ballaraiza Show. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Support for this show comes from Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep.

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Fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too. Oh really?

[Jasmine Crow, Houston]

Thanks.

[Sponsor Voice]

Capital One bank guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com bank capital1na member FDIC.

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