Hotel buffets can be a huge waste of food. Under standard operating procedures, the leftover food from hotel buffets, as well as other restaurants, must be thrown out at the end of the day.
The
Bogor-based Emmanuel Foundation, which aims to provide support, education and
health care to less fortunate communities in Indonesia, sees this as a chance
to make a difference.
In 2003, it
established a food rescue program, which collects the leftover food from some
of Jakarta’s ritziest hotels and redistributes it to those in need.
Twelve
years on, the program is still going strong, helping around 265,000 less
fortunate families. It even receives regular food contributions from an airline
catering company and three top restaurants in Jakarta.
Monique
Thenu, the chief executive of the Emmanuel Foundation, says the program was
initiated by a then-new director at a five-star hotel in Jakarta, who contacted
founder Emmanuel Laumonier about a food rescue program. The French-Indonesian
humanitarian immediately considered it a good idea, and soon after sent over a
minivan to pick up hotel food each day.
At the
start, the program only redistributed the food to trash-picking communities
across Jakarta. The program has grown much bigger now, operating two large
trucks and connecting with 16 hotels, including the J.W. Marriott.
“Each
month, we pick up around two tons of food from these hotels,” Monique says.
To collect
the food, the trucks leave the Emmanuel Foundation’s headquarters in Bogor very
early in the morning, arriving in Jakarta at 9 a.m. They then start their
rounds of the hotel, picking up leftovers from the breakfast buffets, including
breads, fruits, meats, chicken, sausages and cakes.
“The hotel
chefs screen the food carefully,” Monique says. “We then package it by category
and place it in the trucks’ chillers.”
The trucks
then head from the hotels to impoverished communities in Kampung Pisang,
Tangerang; Bukit Sentul, Bogor; and Galuga, Bogor, all of which the Emmanuel
Foundation has surveyed beforehand.
“Most of
the people in these areas work as trash pickers or day laborers,” Monique says.
“They’re very poor and live in squalid conditions.”
The
Emmanuel Foundation works with the community leaders in these neighborhoods to
register and provide daily coupons for residents to get their daily food
portions from the program.
“The trucks
usually arrive in our neighborhood around midday,” says Bibit, a resident of
Kampung Pisang.
By then,
the local women and children have gathered at the appointed meeting point,
usually an open field, bringing their own food containers.
The staff
of the Emmanuel Foundation then distribute the food to them.
“We feel so
fortunate,” says Santi, another resident of Kampung Pisang. “With the FRP
program, our family can have meat almost every day. Before, we could only
afford meat once a year, on Idul Adha [an Islamic holiday].”
Santi says
her family would otherwise subsist only on rice, vegetables and crackers. Even
eggs were a luxury for them before.
“Now, my
children can have bread, milk and cereal for breakfast,” says Santi, who also
works at a vegetable farm in Tangerang.
“And we can have eggs, chicken and meat for lunch and dinner.”
Does such a
program make the people dependent on handouts?
“Well, this
program is intended to improve the recipients’ daily nutrition,” Monique says.
“And when the people achieve self-sufficiency, we usually move to another
location.”
Together
with the program, the Emmanuel Foundation also organizes workshops on food
processing in the neighborhoods.
“A couple
of months ago, we had a chef who taught them how to make meatballs from bread,
without meat,” Monique says. “The bakso actually tastes good, just like
dumplings.”
Participating
hotels also organize visits for the kids. Recently, the foundation and the
Marriott invited 55 children and their caretakers to a buffet dinner at the
hotel.
Bagaskara,
a third-grader from Kampung Pisang who went on the trip, says he was astounded
at the sight of the buffet.
“There’s so
much food and everything is so delicious,” he says. “But I especially love the
soup and the bread.”
“We hope
many more hotels, restaurants and caterers will join us in salvaging food and
helping those in need,” Monique says.
The Peak
For more
information, check out yayasan-emmanuel.org.
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