FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Chef helps feed needy: Staples
Daniel Huber embodies much of what is good about Edmonton’s volunteer community, but he’s best known locally as @theBurlyChef, a local wit, sage and curmudgeon on political and social issues on Twitter.
Here are a few of Huber’s recent Twitticisms: “Nothing feels as 39 yr old as sitting in a teenage-packed food court by yourself with an air filter in the seat beside you that you just bought from Home Depot.”
And: “People who get offended on behalf of Gods. Just the worst. I think if God does exist. They got this on lock. Created the universe and such. Pump the brakes.”
To his credit, Huber realizes it takes more than tweets to make himself and the world a better place. He’s taken concrete action for years as a chef, a businessman and a volunteer.
Most recently, Huber took on the leadership of a group called Leftovers, a non-profit organization fighting food waste. Leftovers Edmonton volunteers pick up unused perishable food from restaurants and grocery stores and take it to feed folks at places like The Mustard Seed and the Bissell Centre.
I was curious to find out how and why Huber got involved in Leftovers, which is affiliated with the senior Leftover Calgary organization.
He’s got a no-nonsense attitude about serving others. All he cares about is getting the best results, he says, even if that means toes get stepped on. Even his own toes.
It’s an attitude that comes from his work as a chef, he says.
“When you’re a chef you go into the kitchen and you have to cook for 500 people. You have a bunch of different people from different walks of life (to work with). You’re not concerned about what religion they are, who they are voting for. You just have to get what you’re doing done.”
Huber grew up in Wainwright and started as a cook after high school, working in a breakfast place in Merritt, B.C. In Edmonton, he worked his way up from dishwater to executive chef of the O’Byrne’s group, which had seven local restaurants, including The Druid. He trained as a chef at NAIT. He was drawn to the job because it wasn’t a desk job and it offered plenty of opportunity to move around. In his 20 years in the business, he’s worked at about 15 places.
In that time, he saw the waste of food that went on, mainly when he worked as a caterer.
“We’d go pick up from a bakery and they’d be throwing a bunch of bread out in the garbage. We’d do the events and only half the people would show up because corporate would buy too many tickets ... That food would go into the garbage, tonnes of it.”
Through the restaurant grapevine, he found out about internal rules in some chain restaurants where due to franchise contracts they have to throw out food well before its “best before” date.
Huber was complaining at a family gathering about all this waste when his wife’s cousin heard him. Her group started Leftovers in Edmonton, but the group needed a driving force. Huber stepped up and has been running it for 11 months.
His group is unlike the Edmonton Food Bank in that it focuses on perishable food, while the food bank focuses on non-perishable, Huber says.
“The best way to describe it is they’re like the general practitioner. We’re the specialist.”
Restaurants at large institutions also throw out a “ridiculous” amount of food, Huber said, as do grocery stores. Huber estimates the big stores throw out about 30 per cent of their perishables each month, but much of that food is completely safe for consumption.
He’s working with these grocers to find a way they can donate this food. He hasn’t yet cracked that code due to industry business practices, government regulation and inertia, which has left him somewhat frustrated but still determined to solve the issue.
“This isn’t rocket science. And it doesn’t cost anybody a dollar. It doesn’t cost any investment for any of the people throwing the food out. There’s no excuse whatsoever.”
I’ll leave the last word here to Huber, his battle cry to make real progress on the issue of not wasting food and feeding poorly nourished folks: “If we’re not giving people the basic amount of nutrition to just tackle the day, then what are we doing ? We’re just creating a system in which people don’t want to get up and go find a job because they feel like garbage.”
This isn’t rocket science. And it doesn’t cost anybody a dollar. It doesn’t cost any investment for any of the people throwing the food out. There’s no excuse whatsoever.