Daily Bowl: A Simple Approach to Ending Hunger

The core of Daily Bowl’s mission is simple: recover surplus edible food, nourish communities.

Every morning, our refrigerated vans roll out on a mapped route with one clear agenda. We visit donor partners—including institutional kitchens, hospitals, wholesalers, and restaurants—to carefully check, weigh, and load surplus food. This isn’t waste; it’s perfectly edible food, such as extra prepared meals from a hospital or an unplanned surplus of shelf-stable items.

Our work is an act of real-time transformation. Where a time-sensitive donation might have once headed for the compost bin, it is now swiftly delivered to a matching nonprofit partner agency, like a soup kitchen or community pantry. This careful, constant tracking ensures that thousands of healthy meals are saved and shared each day. Every run is logged to better understand and optimize our network.

Since our founding in 2016, Daily Bowl has grown into a crucial player in the fight against food insecurity. We have successfully diverted more than six million pounds of food from landfills, turning it into direct support for people who need it most. We were an early adopter and crucial partner in helping businesses comply with California’s SB1383 mandate ((which requires food generators to donate surplus food), demonstrating how surplus can reliably become community support.

Chitra Chandrasekaran is Daily Bowl’s manager of operations. As an operations manager, her primary responsibilities include managing food rescue and distribution logistics, volunteer training and management, record keeping and reporting.

Contact
www.dailybowl.org
email: info@dailybowl.org
@dailybowluc