If you told Max Kaniger a decade ago that he’d soon be running one of the region’s fastest-growing and most impactful nonprofits, he might not have believed you. But a simple yet substantial idea he had in 2015 sparked Kanbe’s Markets, an organization that just opened its 100th location — to build a more inclusive food system by transforming food loss into food access. With Kanbe’s, Max believes Kansas City can be the first region in the United States to fully eradicate food insecurity.
“I grew up in restaurants, so I was always surrounded by food,” Max says. “I was always acutely aware of its ability to bring people together, but I took for granted that everyone knew where their next meal was coming from.”
Growing up in Brookside, Max’s parents owned a contemporary restaurant near the Country Club Plaza, and he worked in kitchens and grocery stores throughout Kansas City into adulthood. During these years, he saw plenty of fresh produce perish before it could reach anyone’s plate.
“Up to 40% of all food grown in the U.S. ends up in landfills,” says Max. “Meanwhile, 1 in 8 households in the richest country in the world are designated by the USDA as ‘food insecure.’ That never sat right with me — we have the resources; we just don’t have a supply chain that’s built to minimize food waste.”
In 2016, Max founded Kanbe’s Markets, the first perishable logistics nonprofit that restores fresh-food access to small businesses so they can once again sell high-quality and a wide variety of produce at or below conventional grocery prices, all while also rescuing and reducing unnecessary food loss. Partnering with wholesale suppliers, hunger relief partners, and local farmers, Kanbe’s rescued more than 1 million pounds of produce from landfills in 2024 and is on pace to reach 1.25 million pounds this calendar year.
Kanbe’s flagship Fresh Food Access program delivers fresh, affordable fruits and vegetables from its 30,000-square-foot warehouse near the Coleman Highlands neighborhood to locally owned convenience stores, gas stations, and corner bodegas with deep ties in the community. This model has dramatically increased the number of Kansas Citians with access to nutritious food. Since its first store opening in 2016 to the ribbon cutting at its 100th store partner earlier this fall, Kanbe’s has expanded food access for more than 200,000 people.
“This program is mutually beneficial for everyone involved,” Max says. “Local business owners are making money, entire communities have affordable choices of nearly 20 different types of fruits and vegetables, and we’re able to expand our footprint into more and more communities, including the Northland and Wyandotte County in just the past couple months.”
Opening its 100th Fresh Food Access Partner isn’t just a nice number to celebrate — it reflects Kanbe’s impressively rapid expansion throughout the region and is a sign of more milestones to come. The Northland Health Alliance recently reported that 2 in 5 Northland residents live in areas without easy access to fresh, healthy food. With five new Healthy Corner Stores opened in the Northland within the past four months, Kanbe’s footprint has officially reached across the river, but this program is just a small piece of Kanbe’s impact and operations.
In order to understand this growth, it helps to understand the entire food supply chain and the inefficiencies Kanbe’s is addressing. Imagine a palette of strawberries sitting in a nearby warehouse waiting to be delivered to your favorite grocery store. If someone spots mold on a single strawberry, it’s easier to toss the entire palette into a landfill than it is to sort out the good from the bad. Or if a distributor sends too many trucks of strawberries to the region, it’s too costly to move them to another market where they might be sold.
At Kanbe’s, thousands of volunteers work through more than a million pounds of produce each year to sort this food into four categories. The best produce heads to the Fresh Food Store Partners to be resold. The next level produce, which might be cosmetically imperfect but is otherwise edible, heads to Kanbe’s community partners, a network of more than 50 of local nonprofits making meals for our most vulnerable neighbors. Next, there are the fruits and vegetables that aren’t suitable for human consumption but make for delicious and nutritious feed for thousands of local farm animals. Finally, for the food that’s well past its prime, Kanbe’s redirects landfill-bound produce to local farms and commercial composting operations, keeping valuable nutrients within the food system.
“From the beginning, I’ve always stressed that Kanbe's does not feed people," says Max. "We’re here to distribute food where it’s needed most—places where our current food system isn’t working. We can’t force people to eat healthy, but we can empower people to make healthier lifestyle choices by making it easier to access what should ultimately be a right—not a privilege.”
For a decade, Kanbe’s mission-driven growth has thrived on community engagement. Volunteers are the backbone of its operations—sorting, packing, and redistributing produce, assisting in outreach, and supporting logistics in the warehouse and office. The Kanbe’s team also hosts a suite of engaging, community-rooted events, including its Ugly Dinner Series, which challenges Kansas City’s best restaurants and most talented chefs to reimagine “ugly” produce into beautiful meals.
At the heart of Kanbe’s work is its Grassroots Growers program, a monthly giving initiative that provides reliable funding to fight food waste and expand access to fresh food. By keeping costs low, more of each donation directly fuels Kanbe’s mission. Grassroots Growers feels less like a donor program and more like a movement. Supporters are helping to shape a future beyond hunger, advocating for solutions, and planting the seeds for lasting change one month at a time.
“What we’re doing isn’t that complicated,” says Max. “It takes time and teamwork to figure out the logistics of how to get food from point A to point B, but our work is actually quite simple. We’ve built an incredible network of growers, distributors, nonprofits, volunteers, donors, and entire communities. We’re all working together to reshape how we think about food. If it works here, there’s no reason to think it can’t work everywhere.”
Want to get involved? Visit kanbesmarkets.org to learn more about the Grassroot Growers program, volunteering opportunities, upcoming community events, and more!
There’s no reason to think it can’t work everywhere.
We have the resources, we just don’t have a supply chain that’s built to minimize food waste.