TCU Donates Leftover Food After Football Games To The Homeless

November 11, 2017

Credit: Star-Telegram

A student organization is working to eliminate food waste on campus by donating leftover food from football games to the homeless.

TCU's Food Recovery Network donates hundreds of pounds of food to the Union Gospel Mission homeless shelter after every home football game. The students also deliver leftovers from the campus dining hall twice a week.

"Everything that gets brought here gets used," said Robert Clethan, the food services director at the Union Gospel Mission, after weighing this week's donation, which totaled just over 860 pounds. "Everything."

Robert Clethan / Credit: Star-Telegram

Megan McCracken, a senior student and president of the Food Recovery Network, said the group began in the spring with the deliveries from the dining hall.

After researching food recovery methods at other universities, the group learned that football stadium leftovers — because of the sheer quantity of the food needed — had been effective as donations elsewhere.

Credit: Star-Telegram

The student organization also helps serve food at the Union Gospel Mission once a month.

"Being a young organization, our main focus has definitely been food recoveries," McCracken said. "But we hope as we continue to grow, we can do more stuff on campus and reach out to more community organizations."

Clethan said the Union Gospel Mission serves meals to about 300 people three times a day.

"People really want to help out, but they don't know how to help out sometimes," he said. "They just need to know there's a place like this that can use things like that."