Olive Garden donates food to local soup kitchen
Olive Garden donates unused food to RIFA through Olive Garden Harvest program
JACKSON, Tenn. — The Regional Inter-Faith Association, better known as RIFA, serves a free hot lunch seven days a week through its soup kitchen. Once a week, the meal is proved by Olive Garden.
“It’s also great to be able to partner with restaurants who are willing to help those in need and sacrifice a little bit to help someone else,” said RIFA Assistant Director Shaun Powers. “It goes a long way to help feed people in the soup kitchen.”
Instead of throwing the extra meals away, through the Olive Gardens Harvest Program the Jackson location has been able to donate hundreds of pounds of food to RIFA on a weekly basis for the last eight years.
“People all around that are starving in this city and surrounding areas, so we try to help as much as possible and give as much as possible,” said Olive Garden Culinary Manager Antonio Black.
Every day, Olive Garden sets aside unserved food such as fish and fresh vegetables for donations.
“I think it’s a great thing we can do for Jackson, because there’s a lot of people that rely on the food that RIFA prepares in the soup kitchen rather than throw it in the garbage,” customer Donna Short said.
Rest assured, the items donated are not leftovers — just extra, unused food.
“The cook has cooked it by mistake or the server has put the order incorrectly,” Black said. “Then we box it up, we date it and put the pounds on it and freeze it as soon as possible.”
“It’s only through the relationships of community partners like Olive Garden we are able to do the work we do,” Powers said. “We are thankful for their support.”
Locally, Olive Garden has provided more than 41,000 meals to the RIFA soup kitchen over the past eight years. Through this program, Olive Garden restaurants nationwide have donated more than 33 million pounds of food.
