Ben Simon has lived with food recovery in mind ever since he and two other co-founders created the Food Recovery Network at this university in 2011.
Four years later, the network is a national organization with 111 student chapters and more than 600,000 pounds of recovered food since its inception. Simon, the 25-year-old executive director, is now being recognized for his efforts.
On Jan. 5 Forbes Magazine named Simon to its annual “30 Under 30” list for social entrepreneurs for his continued passion and dedication to the cause.
“I actually found out the day they announced it, after they announced it,” Simon said. “It felt really rewarding, and validation of all the good work Food Recovery Network has been doing and felt great to be able to win the award on behalf of all of our co-founders and volunteers and staff.”
The list is now in its fourth year and features 600 innovators and entrepreneurs younger than 30, among 20 different categories, according to a Forbes press release. A panel of judges, including Cheryl Dorsey, Jean Case and Randall Lane, collaborated on the social entrepreneurs list.
The FRN, based in College Park, has a mission to take unsold food from university dining halls and sporting events and give it to people in the local community suffering from food insecurity.
Simon said he holds FRN to that mission, keeping in mind the statistics that 1 in 6 Americans go hungry and that America wastes 40 percent of its food.
“America doesn’t actually have a food shortage problem. America has a food distribution problem … and that’s exactly the work FRN does,” Simon said. “From the gate, we wanted it to be a movement, more than just something at one college. We very quickly could see that this had legs, but we were floored with how fast it grew.”
This university’s chapter co-president, junior biology major LeAnne Young, said students recovered more than 10,000 pounds of food last semester, collecting 100 to 300 pounds of food every weeknight from 251 North and hundreds of pounds of food at football and basketball games.
“We have individual volunteers, but we also partner with other organizations and provide food recovery opportunities for them,” Young said. “And it’s just crazy, because if we weren’t there, all of that food would’ve been thrown into the trash, and it just would’ve been taking up space in landfills.”
Young said Simon continues to be involved with the chapter and has met with her and other FRN volunteers.
“He’s just very, very dedicated to food recovery; he still comes out to College Park sometimes and helps with recoveries even though he has a billion of other things to do,” Young said. “I think that’s really cool.”
Simon also visits the campus to talk with students as a figurehead for social entrepreneurship, said Ryan Steinbach, the community manager for the Center for Social Value Creation at the business school.
Steinbach, like Young, also applauded Simon’s dedication to food recovery, noting how it carries over to his personal life.
“He’s the kind of person where if you don’t eat everything on your plate … he will eat it for you or box it,” Steinbach said. “That’s who he is. That’s his image. That’s the cause that he’s promoting. He’s on it 100 percent of the time.”
In addition to establishing a goal to expand the organization to 150 chapters by May, Simon said FRN is also setting its sights on future goals, such as going international, providing food recovery programs for grade schools and advocating giving smaller businesses the same enhanced tax deductions for food recoveries as larger corporations.
“Time is our largest challenge,” Simon said. “There are so many opportunities in the field of food recovery. … It’s really just a matter of prioritizing, knowing what to say yes to and what to say no to and remembering what our mission is.”
CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that biology major LeAnne Young is a senior and the network is a national organization with 111 student chapters. Young is a junior, and there are currently 113 chapters. The story has been updated to reflect these changes.
