A lot happens under the soaring ceiling of the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market, a cathedral of fruits and vegetables. Roughly $1.5 billion’s worth of produce passes through this 550,000-square-foot cooler in a year, from everyday items like avocados and oranges to relative rarities like green almonds and quenepas. Trucks start unloading in the wee hours of the morning, bringing shipments from growers of all sizes, locally and abroad, destined for supermarkets, restaurants, and bodegas in Philly and beyond.
With all that food, it’s inevitable some will go to waste. Produce might not meet a buyer’s size/shape/color expectations, or someone overstocked and couldn’t off-load the excess, or boxes in a pallet were damaged. In many instances, the produce is perfectly good, but the vendor can’t find a home for it fast enough, so it winds up in the trash — much like an overlooked bag of arugula in your home refrigerator.
Food waste on an individual scale is one thing. Here, it adds up to millions of pounds per year. So when Philly food-rescue start-up Sharing Excess called to ask if the market had any surplus in May 2021, opportunity was ripe for the picking.
