Event Recap: Nashville Pride Festival

Jul 12

As a women and queer-owned company, we could not have been more honored to lead the Nashville Pride Festival’s food rescue initiative in 2022. This was the largest Pride festival in Nashville’s history and it was a beautiful, inspiring event of LGBTQIA+ celebration!

40% of all food is wasted in the US while 1 in 6 Tennessee children faces food insecurity. Our goal was to improve sustainability while supporting our local community.

Objectives:

Lessen the environmental impact of the event by reducing food waste and utilizing food rescue strategies for VIP, staff, and backstage catering.
Serve the local LGBTQIA+ community and other marginalized populations by donating rescued food to mission-aligned nonprofits in the Nashville area.

After consulting with festival organizers and food vendors, we identified mission-aligned organizations that accepted prepared food on weekends and made it happen! During the festival as VIP and staff meal times closed, Sheeco staff captured leftover pizzas, sandwiches, pasta salad, and more. Society of St. Andrew staff transported the food to our local partners.

In total, 312 pounds of food were rescued from the festival.

312 pounds of food rescued. 169,42 CO2E emissions avoided. 260 meals delivered. 142,272 gallons water saved. 3 organizations received food.

The Food was shared as follows:

Nashville Launch Pad shared 19.1 pounds of Papa Johns pizzas with their LGBTQIA+ youth.
Monroe Harding received 86.7 pounds of pizza, hot dogs, potato salad, corn and fruit salad for their young people in foster care.
Shower the People distributed 193.4 pounds of pizza, bbq, chicken skewers, pasta salad and more to share with people experiencing homelessness.
Remaining 12.8 pounds of drinks and snacks were given to unhoused neighbors.

Meredith, Director of Shower the People shared this with us

“I was actually able to take all the pizzas to an encampment tonight. I wish I had captured the looks of joy when I handed each person their own pizza or was able to record the comments like 'I don’t think I’ll wake up with hunger pains tonight'…either way it was so appreciated.”