This fall, our culinary community is coming together for more than just incredible dining. The upcoming Sip & Savor event celebrates the finest local flavors while championing a crucial cause: combating food waste.
As guests enjoy the best of our local restaurants, their participation directly supports WasteLess Solutions and its mission to divert fresh, perishable food from landfills and into the hands of families in need.
For WasteLess Solutions, that mission already means rescuing thousands of pounds of food every weekend. But as those efforts have grown, the organization has encountered a logistical challenge: having enough cold storage to accommodate the food it rescues.
“We're honored to partner with Millcreek City Lifestyle on an event that showcases Utah's vibrant culinary community while investing in a more sustainable future. Sip & Savor highlights the talent of our local restaurants and gives attendees an opportunity to make a real difference by helping us expand our food rescue efforts and provide more meals for families across Utah,” says Alexx Goeller, Chief Executive Officer of WasteLess Solutions.
Currently, WasteLess operates out of a shared commercial kitchen where refrigeration space is strictly limited. All rescued food must be removed by Tuesday, creating a bottleneck that affects the team’s ability to efficiently sort and distribute produce through its weekday Mobile Markets and nonprofit partners.
Increasing that cold-storage capacity is the goal of WasteLess Solutions’ “Fund-a-Fridge” campaign, an initiative that will directly impact the organization's ability to store food, and in affect, the many people who benefit from its efforts.
The campaign hopes to raise $20,000 to secure either a refrigerated shipping container or a larger, dedicated warehouse space.
For an organization working with fresh, perishable food, expanded cold storage would significantly change its operations. With additional refrigerated space, volunteers would be able to safely store large, unexpected donations while preparing that food for distribution. The added capacity would also allow WasteLess to curate culturally relevant foods for specific communities and maximize the impact of volunteer hours.
Those changes are at the heart of what the Fund-a-Fridge campaign is designed to accomplish. By addressing the organization’s current storage bottleneck, the additional infrastructure would support WasteLess as it sorts and distributes rescued food through its Mobile Markets and nonprofit partners.
Sip & Savor brings that effort together with another part of the community: Millcreek’s local restaurants. The event gives attendees an opportunity to experience the area’s culinary talent while helping WasteLess expand its food rescue efforts and strengthen its community impact locally.
Every dollar raised through the campaign contributes to the infrastructure WasteLess needs to bridge the gap between abundance and need. With additional cold storage, perfectly good food can be safely stored and distributed rather than ending up in the trash.
For Sip & Savor guests, an evening centered on local food also becomes an opportunity to help more of that food reach Utah dinner tables. It also connects an enjoyable night out with a larger community effort to reduce waste and make better use of available food.