COLLIER COUNTY, Fla-- Have you ever wondered what restaurants do with unused food? FOX 4 recently got an inside look at a partnership that collects leftovers from restaurants in Collier County and then distributes them to area soup kitchens, shelters and food pantries.
The Collier Harvest Foundation has more than 3 dozen partner restaurants throughout SWFL that volunteers pick up unused food from on a weekly basis to then distribute to hungry kids and families.
"The gratitude that they see, that you see in their faces is just overwhelming and this is what makes us go out there day after day because we known they are reaching those people most in their community," said Annette Kirk.
Since 2008, The Capital Grille has donated more than 260,000 lbs of food to the Collier Harvest Foundation. Every week The Capital Grille kitchen staff bag unused food in 5 lb. bags for the volunteers to pick up.
"They are porter house steaks, they are rib eye steaks, they are filet mignon, but they don't meet our specifications in size or the trim. So what we do is we cook those off, we freeze them, flash freeze them, bag them up for the harvest people to collect twice a week," said The Capital Grille manager Will Reynolds.
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