Grace to Go Grassroots Saving Grace Perishable Food Rescue and Delivery helps others PHOTOS COURTESY SAVING GRACE PERISHABLE FOOD RESCUE AND DELIVERY


BY TODD TRAUB Contributing Writer


Talk about getting food to go. Omaha-based Saving Grace Perishable


Food Rescue and Delivery is fighting hunger and combating waste by doing exactly what its name states, picking up excess, healthy, fresh and frozen food that would otherwise go to waste and getting it to the agencies who make it their business to feed the less fortunate. Te grassroots. nonprofit, founded by its


president Beth Ostdiek Smith, has been up and running since Sept. 30, 2013 and in that time has collected more than 344 tons of food valued at more than $1 million. “I like to call it a food pipeline,” Smith said.


“Here in Nebraska there’s a lot of talk about pipelines.” With two trucks and two drivers, Saving


Grace collects excess food from a number of donor restaurants, grocery stores, caterers and other food service entities and delivers it to the food pantries, ministries, shelters and centers that make up its group of 17 food recipient partners. “We’re just at the tip of the iceberg on food


rescue,” Smith said, predicting that the concept of food rescue is about to explode nationally. Born in Geneva, Nebraska, as the middle


child among 11 siblings, Smith took the school of life approach to learning a career, bypassing college to work and get a business education in the travel industry for close to 25 years. “My education was in the business world,”


Smith said. “Still is.” Smith managed a clientele of corporate and


VIP travelers as well as managing four offices, which allowed her numerous opportunities to travel the world, see different cultures and open her mind to innovative, new ways of doing things.


She left the travel industry to run the


nonprofit Winners Circle, a goal-setting and rewards program focusing on math, reading and life skills for inner-city elementary schools. On her watch Winner’s Circle grew from four schools to 12, encompassing 4,600 students and 250 teachers before merging with All Our Kids in 2008 to become Partnership 4 Kids. “So it was time to do something different,”


said Smith, the former Winners Circle executive director. Visiting her mother and sister in Arizona, Smith learned of a food rescue program there


On the scene as a Saving Grace truck makes a pantry delivery


Smith and Judy Rydberg with first truck in 2013


(Inset photo) Beth Ostdiek


and, with 40 percent of the food produced in the U.S. winding up in dumpsters, decided to see if she could initiate a food rescue program in Omaha. “I took a leap of faith and checked around


to see if anybody was doing anything different in Omaha,” Smith said. While there were food pantries and other


programs to feed the hungry, Smith saw there was no food rescue effort underway and in March 2013 began working to ramp up Saving Grace — the first professionally


Continues NEBRASKA TRUCKER — ISSUE 6, 2015 — www.nebtrucking.com 7


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