Food Cowboy helping produce companies, hungry Americans
Food Cowboy helping produce companies, hungry Americans
Food Cowboy recently announced the launch of its online service that helps companies route rejected shipments of fresh fruits and vegetables to charities instead of to landfills.
Food companies can reduce their taxes by donating wholesome but unmarketable inventory. By using the same mapping, mobile communications and electronic commerce tools that power sites like Yelp and eBay, Food Cowboy overcomes 
potential barriers, including legal issues and time, both for finding a place to donate and preparing the paperwork to get the tax deductions.
With Food Cowboy, a trucker, dispatcher or food broker can go online and find a food bank, pantry, soup kitchen or shelter that’s open, accessible and close to their route, anywhere in the country.
To help with tax incentives and for a small commission, Food Cowboy automates the process of applying for tax benefits so food companies are rewarded regardless of how much they donate.
In order to alleviate concern about being sued over allegedly tainted donations, Food Cowboy requires both donors and food charities to inspect donations and certify that they are “apparently wholesome” before they change hands, which affords donors protections under the federal Good Samaritan Food Donation Act.
Food Cowboy also records how well each party performs in each transaction and discloses the identities of individual food donors only to food charity managers and public health officials.
Hunger is real for 37 million Americans. Yet each year food companies throw away nearly 2 million tons of wholesome fresh fruits and vegetables – enough to feed 10 million people every day for a year. All that food could be given to food charities – and another half-million tons of spoiled produce could be fed to livestock, used as fertilizer or composted.
For more information, contact Roger Gordon at 202/677-5601 or [email protected].
