Let’s be frank. Have you ever wondered what happens to all the hot dog buns after a game at PNC Park?
Food waste at sports stadiums and arenas can be a huge problem both in waste removal costs and loss of money. Thankfully, 412 Food Rescue has built a strong symbiotic relationship with PNC Park and Aramark to help drastically reduce food waste.
Since 2018, 412 Food Rescue has rescued over 113,450 lbs of food from Aramark and the Pirates Clubhouse. Most of the food we rescue from the stadium comprises hot dog buns, loaves of bread, and rolls. This is valuable food that we can take and redistribute to the community!
As we entered into the 2024 baseball season, we wanted to change up how we usually collect all this food. In the past, our fleet would go and directly take dozens of bread racks and have to manually unload each of them at our various nonprofit partner locations. We knew that this was a timely and costly endeavor when we had to pack multiple other pickups in a day.
So this year, we worked with Aramark and PNC Park to bring in 5-6 volunteers twice a month to help repackage the food prior to our fleet picking up. In total, we had 21 volunteers–including multiple returners–working to inspect and repackage all the bread into watermelon bins and bags. Thanks to these amazing volunteers, we were able to rescue nearly 7,000 more pounds of food than last year!
In total, our volunteers packed around 26,563 lbs of food from PNC Park in 2024. On top of the Aramark donations, Chef Tony Palatucci at the Pirates Clubhouse helped us rescue another 4,103 lbs!
All of this food was taken to our hard-working partners including Prayer Lutheran Church, The Speed Family Blessing Box Pantry, The McKeesport Agape Center, and Victory Family Church.
We would like to give a big thank you to the PNC Park and Aramark staff, our volunteers, and nonprofit partners for all the work they have put in to prevent perfectly good food from being wasted and redirecting it back to communities that feed people!
To learn more about these efforts, check out our recent article in the Pittsburgh Tribune Live: https://triblive.com/sports/pirates/what-happens-to-pnc-parks-leftover-food/
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