Matt Jozwiak, 33
CEO, Rethink Food
It took a chef to envision a radical new approach to food insecurity.
Matt Jozwiak spent years working in top restaurants in Europe and New York. But the hunger he witnessed during his career is what’s at the top of his mind.
“I was broke as a cook,” Jozwiak said. “I lived in rough neighborhoods, and I saw that people were hurting. I saw this juxtaposition while I was serving the wealthiest of the wealthy. There’s so much food waste.”
In response, the accomplished chef founded a nonprofit, Rethink Food, in 2017. It rescues fare from restaurants, corporate kitchens and grocery stores that otherwise would go to waste—not for the typical purpose of delivering pantry items to distribution sites but to transform the food into meals for the hungry.
Rethink has two main components: a commissary that prepares nutritious, culturally appropriate meals for religious organizations, senior centers, after-school programs and homeless shelters and its year-old Rethink Certified program, which provides grants to restaurants to prepare meals for the food insecure in their own neighborhood.
In 2020 the program provided more than 2.5 million meals for some 125 community centers in New York, Chicago, Nashville and San Francisco, with more cities planned. The projection for this year is 4 million meals.
Rethink Certified distributed $10 million last year to about 60 restaurants; the goal for this year is $21 million.
Financial support comes from corporate sponsors, foundations and individuals.
“Matt brings a deep level of passion and authenticity to this work,” said Erin Hill, Rethink’s chief development officer. “These meals provide dignity for someone going through a rough time while also preventing restaurant layoffs and closures.”
Why hasn’t there been a successful new approach to feeding the food insecure before?
“Because it’s such a massive problem,” Jozwiak said.