He chases semitrucks so food can be 'rescued,' not dumped along the route

MANKATO – Tom Polich’s phone rang at 8:30 a.m. with a tip: A ton and a half of chicken thighs was about to get thrown out. The meat from Tyson Foods was fresh, and the temperature was perfect. But there had been a paperwork mix-up, and now there was a truck driver on a tight schedule who needed her trailer empty before she could leave Mankato and get to her next job. Her only choice was the landfill — or food rescuers like Polich who want that food in the hands of people in need.

Polich sprang into action, racing to Mankato and calling the truck driver to line up a drop-off at a local time and place. That morning he contacted a network of food shelves and volunteers. They met the truck driver at the Wooden Spoon bakery in Mankato, and they helped Polich unload 3,000 pounds of chicken into a walk-in cooler to be turned into soup that will feed people at youth shelters and the Salvation Army throughout the winter.

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Polich is in his first year as a regional food rescue coordinator with the Region Nine Development Commission. It’s a job created to help prevent rejected groceries from trucks crossing the country from ending up in landfills and instead redirect them to local food shelves. Though snagging food from trucks might be an unusual way to collect, it’s a task that’s increasingly important, with hunger and food insecurity rising throughout the state. Last year, Minnesota food shelves saw a record of nearly 9 million visits, and demand is rising as costs at grocery stores stay high.

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At his office in Mankato last week, Polich picked up his phone and read a text. Josh Sorenson, program manager at Feeding Our Communities Partners, had a pallet of hams rescued from a truck bound for the Walmart distribution center in town. “How much ham are we talking about here?” Polich said. There were 50 hams, Sorenson said. They had been rejected because their pallet had been damaged, and they had been bound for the landfill if not for a semitruck driver contacting a local food rescuer.

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Since February, Polich has helped recover 30 tons of food that would have been dumped. He keeps a spreadsheet tracking rescues: seven tons of potatoes in July, a ton of plums in August, three pallets of Caesar salad mix in November. The items he rescues are not spoiled but are rejected for reasons that seem to only make sense on a spreadsheet. The No. 1 reason, Polich said, is overordering, with the distribution center later saying they can’t take the order. Other reasons include misprinted labels or damaged packaging. Sometimes the produce just doesn’t look nice enough, or in one case, the potatoes were too small.

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