Delicious dishes such as juicy Cornish hens, creamy mac and cheese, greens, beans and sweet potato pies will fill our bellies as we gather with family and friends this holiday season. Yet, while we indulge in an abundance of goodies, there are 42 million people, in America, whose tables remain bare and it’s not due to a food shortage. Each year, 80 billion pounds of food is wasted as unsold or uneaten, which is 35% of the available food for consumption.
Social entrepreneur, Jasmine Crowe is disrupting and shifting the narrative of food insecurity by merging food and technology to end hunger and food waste. The proud HBCU grad (North Carolina Central University) discovered that solving the issue of hunger is about logistics, not scarcity, so she founded Goodr, a tech company that teaches businesses how to feed more people while wasting less food.
Launched in 2017, Goodr — whose name simply refers to the company’s mission to do good — has worked with over 200 businesses to divert over 200M lbs. of food. “If you think of where we are today with DoorDash, Instacart and Uber Eats, a lot of people are using technology to order food. And in a sense, we [Goodr] are using technology to get excess food to people in need,” explains Crowe.
“We essentially tell customers that we can inventory everything it is that they sell when they have excess food, they can use our technology to request a pickup, and then we will get that food picked up and then donate it to a nonprofit that serves families in need. It’s not always as easy as it seems, there’s still a lot of convincing that we have to do. But in a nutshell, we make it very easy. So almost as easy as it is to order a pickup or delivery of food that you and I eat every day, we kind of try and do the same thing for our customers, making it really easy for them to get this food donated instead of it getting thrown away.”
Goodr has serviced large-scale venues and corporations such as Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport, Chick-fil-A, American Express, the NBA, and the NFL. Yet, the innovative visionary’s goal has always “just been to serve people,” so she began by creating a pop-up restaurant, in 2013, called Sunday Soul that fed homeless people around Atlanta.
“A video of my work actually went viral and people were saying, ‘This is so amazing. Who donates the food?’ And the reality was, nobody. I was couponing, price matching, cooking all the food myself. And I started thinking like, wow, I should try and get this food donated. Because you know, there’s so much food going to waste — as I started to research food waste, and I think that’s what got me ultimately to launch Goodr,” she recalls.
As she shares her journey, Crowe emits an ineffable resilience, which is likely why her one-woman operation has now evolved into 15 full-time and about 30 part-time employees, generating over $7M in revenue within the last year despite the pandemic.
Prior to Goodr, the Atlanta native helped celebrities start, run and manage their nonprofits. She has worked in the space of helping people for over a decade, humbly revealing her collaborations with notable heavyweights such as Kandi Burruss, T.I., Future, Mike Will Made It, and a bevy of NFL and NBA stars.
This past September, her partnership with rapper Gunna, Foot Locker, and Reebok produced Goodr’s first in-school grocery store. The Gunna Goodr Grocery Store, the first-ever grocery store of its kind, and Drip Closet offer students and families, at Ronald E. McNair middle school in College Park, GA, food, clothing, and household items free of charge.
“We’ve built a web app and families go on and just register. They go to the front office, get a reusable grocery bag and then, they get to go shopping. It’s that simple.”
With the season of giving upon us, Goodr is seasoning souls from communities to corporations. When asked what seasoning souls means to her, Crowe’s humanitarian spirit promptly replied. “I just think it means adding a little something to someone’s soul. When I think of seasoning an item, you’re adding some more flavor to it and making it a little better.”
As a mother and fiancée, Crowe understands the importance of instilling compassion in people while they’re young, thus her children’s book Everybody Eats teaches kids how hunger affects everyone, no matter their race or stage in life. It also shows readers how to be a part of the solution. Adapted from her 2019 Ted Talk, proceeds from the book will go towards supporting programs that feed children.
“There’s one in five kids now that are actually experiencing hunger and the reality is that some kids that you know, you may have a kid that’s in school with another child who is hungry,” she says. “The main character’s name is Carter and she volunteers at a food bank one Saturday with her family and happens to see one of her friends from a school that’s there. That’s a very real situation that can happen. And so from there, she kind of can’t believe that her friend is hungry, and goes on this mission to try and solve it and not embarrass the friend.” Naturally, doing good comes with challenges about which Crowe speaks with keen gravitas. Her success has shown dedication, patience, and perseverance, which is why her work is award-winning.
“Fundraising is definitely always something that can be a hindrance, making sure that I have the capital to do the work is a big thing. Because even though we’ve raised like $2M, in reality, it’s really nothing, considering what we need to run a business. What has helped me has been the support of people around me; I never take that for granted. There’s always somebody who’s making the call, making an introduction and that helps. I would like to work with a lot more sports teams and companies like Google.”
Goodr is in over 20 markets including Las Vegas, New Orleans, Dallas, Texas, Orlando, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Chicago. Crowe, who says her favorite food is seafood, is optimistic about the longevity of its intentional impact.
“We’re going to continue to work on hunger, we’re hoping to launch more grocery stores and end food waste. I never know what’s next for sure. But I think where we will really focus on is just always being in the now and focusing on our mission, which is to feed more and waste less.”
Always game to share a great story, Raquelle “Rocki” Harris is a content curator who aims to shift old narratives into new perspectives. She is an experienced writer, editor, and media correspondent who focuses on Black culture, minority-owned businesses, entertainment, and relationships. Passionate about mastering multiple platforms, she is also the host/producer of Rocki’s Reality podcast on Motor City Woman Radio.