Mission Statement
Sharing Excess is a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that uses surplus food to address food insecurity. While over 44 million people in the U.S. face food insecurity, nearly 40% of the nation's food supply goes to waste each year. Our mission is to solve the logistical barriers between excess and scarcity to efficiently rescue and distribute surplus from retailers, wholesalers, and farmers to a network of hunger relief organizations.
About
Sharing Excess was conceived in 2018 when our founder Evan Ehlers, then a student at Drexel University, realized he had 50 meal swipes left in his college dining account and only two days to use them. He decided to swipe all of the meals at once, packed them into his car, and drove around Center City Philadelphia, giving them out to anyone in need. That day changed his life and set Evan on a path to putting excess food to good use, and he enlisted the help of fellow students to create a greater impact. From 2018-2019, Evan worked on Sharing Excess between classes as a boot-strapped startup. Evan would pick up food donations from Trader Joe’s in his grandmother’s car and deliver them to local hunger relief organizations with the help of friends. When the pandemic hit in 2020, the work of Sharing Excess was thrown into the spotlight, and the organization accelerated its growth to meet a staggering demand for local food waste and food insecurity.
In just five years, Sharing Excess has become one of the largest food rescue organizations in the country. What began with one Trader Joe's evolved into a network of grocers, restaurants, farmers, and wholesalers who have contributed over 80 million pounds of food to communities with the help of Sharing Excess and its small army of volunteers.
