The Quest Food Exchange is operated by the Quest Outreach Society, a registered not-for-profit organization founded in 1990. The mandate of Quest Food Exchange is to pick up non-marketable food from every sector of the food industry and redistribute it to those in need, benefiting individuals, communities and the environment. In its 2006/2007 fiscal year, Quest collected $8.26 million worth of food from 343 food suppliers. This rescued food was diverted to Lower Mainland social service agency partners for distribution. Quest now serves more than 244 social service agencies feeding 70,000 people each month.
OUR SERVICES BENEFIT:
Individuals: We provide food to kitchens serving homeless and street people in Vancouver's downtown eastside; we prepare hot meals in our own kitchens that are distributed through various outreach programs; and we distribute emergency food hampers for individuals referred by social service agencies.
Communities: We supply food to hundreds of outreach programs ranging from neighbourhood houses, women's shelters, halfway houses, recovery centres, street youth, and school lunch programs, and more. This not only helps feed the people they serve, but it also enables these organizations to focus on their unique mission to serve the community.
The environment: We rescue over 480,830 pounds of food every month that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill. This represents a monthly reduction of about 241 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide that was not released into the atmosphere. We also recycle food packaging, and help turn food waste into animal feed and compost.
AREAS WE SERVE:
Quest's service area in B.C. currently extends throughout the Lower Mainland, including Vancouver Burnaby, New Westminster, North Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey, the Tri-cities and Maple Ridge. We also ship to support international food programs in Sudan and Nigeria!
