A Tennessee school sends its leftovers to a food rescue weekly

Every shift in the kitchen at Chattanooga Christian School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, ends the same way. The team weighs whatever food is left, writes the weight down and takes its temperature. That habit was already in place when the team started giving its leftovers away, and it turned out to be most of the work. Last school year, the school's foodservice team partnered with the CHATT Foundation, a local food rescue that now collects the leftovers every Friday and gets them to people in need, the trade publication FoodService Director reported on Sept. 10.

Getting started took very little extra work, and that matters to any kitchen that has thought about donating and worried about the labor. The team is managed by SAGE Dining Services, the company that runs the school's food service, and it already tracks its waste through a SAGE program called U+SAGE. Because the measuring was already part of the job, the partnership was easy to start.

"We reached out; they immediately jumped on board, and said, 'We'll take what you can give us,'" said Jimmy Meeker, the school's food service director.

How the Friday handoff works

At the end of each shift, the team weighs, logs and takes the temperature of the leftover food. The food goes into aluminum catering pans that the CHATT Foundation provides, and the pans wait in a cooler until the foundation arrives on Friday. "It's like clockwork; they come at the same time," Meeker said. His team helps load the pans, and the foundation is usually in and out within five to 10 minutes.

The food can be anything from hot dogs to Korean meatballs and sticky rice, and the foundation has found a way to use all of it. "They spread it further," Meeker said. "They'll cut it with other things like rice or beans." Stretching donated food into more meals is also the daily work of a Harlem church kitchen that serves up to 800 meals a week from donated food.

What it takes to start

Meeker's message to other operators is that the step is smaller than it looks, as long as the kitchen already tracks its waste. Instead of going in the trash or the compost, the leftover food now goes through a few small steps. "We just put a lid on it, write the date, take the temperature, and stick it in the cooler," he said.

The school's team plans to keep the partnership going this school year. Meeker sees it as a way for SAGE to be part of the Chattanooga community and to promote the school as well. Schools that want broader help in the kitchen have a partner too: the Chef Ann Foundation, a group that works with school kitchens, reached 1,476,484 students in 2,860 schools in 2025.

If your kitchen already weighs its waste, you have most of what a food rescue needs. This week, find the food rescue nearest you and ask what it can take, which day it can come and who supplies the pans. Then add one line to the closing checklist for the leftovers: put a lid on them, date them, take their temperature and put them in the cooler.