Fishmonger to Food Rescue

By Chris Ramos-Hernandez, Operations Manager at Lovin’ Spoonfuls

Before I joined the staff at Lovin’ Spoonfuls, where I now manage a team of our Food Rescue Coordinators (FRCs), I worked on the vendor side of things as a fishmonger at a grocery store - a location Spoonfuls picked up from. Despite the work being different, there are two key areas of overlap: feeding people and minimizing waste.

I always loved helping customers choose the best food to feed their families and friends. I would set up my service counter in creative ways to catch customers’ eyes and start a conversation where I could help them select the right fish for what they needed. The best part was watching them leave happy with their choice, on their way to feed their families.?

In the grocery world, in addition to making our customers happy, there’s an emphasis on making sales and cutting “shrink,” the term for scanning and logging what we throw out, or in other words, waste. While I enjoyed building those beautiful displays, there was an emphasis on making them bigger because that’s what attracts the customers. But the bigger the display, the bigger the possibility we didn’t sell all the product. You can see how sometimes the goals of feeding people and minimizing waste would be at odds with each other.

High-quality looking food was important, too, sometimes more so than the quality of the food itself. I found that to make my fish case “pop,” I had to match customer expectations when it comes to fish shine, firmness, and the color they think it’s “supposed” to be. But contrary to popular belief, those aren’t always indicators of quality fish. Sometimes I’d receive one or two fillets of fresh king salmon during the wild salmon season that would have an ivory color. Despite being a great product, customers would ignore the ivory salmon because many thought salmon had to have that orange/reddish color to be good. When I could, I’d let them know that the color was just less common and that the flavor is slightly more delicate and buttery than regular king salmon. Unfortunately, though, it often would still be left unsold, and customers would go for the orange/red color that they’re used to seeing.?

We see this at Spoonfuls, too, where we sometimes rescue the “ugly” fruits and vegetables that didn’t get sold because they didn’t look like what consumers were expecting. Some examples: an apple with a small bruise, a funny-looking green pepper, or a bag of oddly-shaped carrots. The produce is still tasty and nutritious, but because of the way they look, they often get left behind on the shelf.

In this case, the ivory-colored king salmon would fall into the shrink category, because it’s product we couldn’t sell. Knowing unexpected shrink like this was always possible, I did my best to limit the shrink where I had more control to avoid wasting food and money. I frequently took a deep dive on my top sellers and top shrink, and compared it to what I’ve been selling on a daily basis to see if I could make adjustments to my pars for more accurate ordering. I’ve looked into previous sales movement as well, which gave me an idea on how much I should order for the week.?

When I was left with unexpected extra product, like that salmon, I thought strategically about how we could use the food to prevent it from becoming waste. Before the pandemic, we used samples for customers in hopes that they may be interested in buying the product. Other times, I’d make whitefish salad out of it. If Lovin’ Spoonfuls was coming for a pickup, I always knew they’d find a good place to bring the excess, unsellable fish we had on hand.

When the cards didn’t align, though, and I had no other option but to waste some of the high-quality fish I was selling, I always thought about those who couldn’t afford to eat that very same food. How often do they have access to it? Was what we were doing enough??

Transitioning into my role at Lovin’ Spoonfuls was an eye-opener to me. I used to see good food go to waste at grocery stores, and now I get to be a bigger part of preventing that waste. I work with our FRCs to ensure food that’s still good to eat gets rescued and then distributed somewhere it will be enjoyed. Our nonprofit partners love the food that we bring to them because it allows individuals and families to get healthy, fresh food that they normally can’t afford on a weekly basis. On average, over 60% of the food we rescue consists of produce, meat, and dairy products which now, because of inflation, are at an all-time high in price.?

And just like my days behind the fish counter, we work, as I used to with my customers, to ensure our nonprofit partners are happy with the quality of food that they’re getting and that what we’re bringing matches the needs of their clients. We work to source food from our vendor partners and be a reliable source of food for them, just like grocery stores for their customers.

I’m grateful to have the opportunity to be on the Spoonfuls team. I’ve been able to take my experience behind the fish counter to food rescue, continuing to minimize food waste and feed people. Along the way, I’ve learned even more about food insecurity including new ways to prevent wasted food.? I’ve been able to pass these lessons on to my kids, too. Most importantly, I’m finally in a position where I’m able to help the community I grew up in and to provide fresh, healthy food to those who need it.