Every Friday morning, Doc McBride makes his way to 10 various nursing homes in Long Beach to deliver fruits, vegetables, canned goods and the resident’s personal favorite: bouquets of fresh flowers.
The 87-year-old has been volunteering for 16 years with the Orange County-based nonprofit organization Food Finders, which focuses on reducing hunger and food waste in Southern California. The nonprofit was founded in 1989 and works with over 250 volunteers on a weekly basis to pick up surplus food and other items from over 300 restaurants, hospitals, schools, manufacturers and more.
A group of local chefs, artists, restaurants and farms will come together on Oct. 15 at the organization’s Food for the Soul: Farm to Tableaux event that will “connect all the dots in our community,” said Maria Bereket, marketing director for Food Finders.
The night marks Food Finder’s first ever farm-to-table event, where locally grown produce from Farm Lot 59, a Signal Hill-based urban farm, will be prepared by esteemed Long Beach chefs—the highlight of the organization’s biggest night of the year.
Food for the Soul will be held at Cal State Long Beach’s “The Plant” area, which can seat over 350 guests. The Stone Soul jazz band will be playing live music for guests to enjoy. The tableaux event will also include a silent auction, a live painting session from a local artist and a flower display from Farm Lot 59.
Local chef and caterer Alex Diaz from Forquilla will be preparing appetizers while TGIS catering will prepare dinner. Caterer Luxe Nosh will be crafting charcuterie boards filled with artisanal cheeses, fruits, vegetables and nuts. Craft beer, wines and cocktails from local distilleries will also be available.
“We want the people who support us to understand that it’s a community effort and that in doing so, we are not just feeding people, but we’re supporting the nonprofits that struggle really hard [and] also we’re impacting [the] climate,” Bereket said.
Michael Remley poses for a portrait while sitting on the tailgate of his truck after loading it with around 40 pounds of donated food that will be heading to the Long Beach Senior Center on Sept. 23, 2022. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune) 
A worker at the Long Beach Senior Center prepares some fruits and veggies dropped off by Michael Remley as part of the Food Finders charity food donation program on Sept. 23, 2022. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune) 
Michael Remley, who has been volunteering with Food Finders for ten years, pushes a shopping cart filled with donated flowers out from the loading dock of a local grocery store morning of Sept. 23, 2022. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune) 
Michael Remley, who has been volunteering with Food Finders for ten years, taps a produce box filled with donated veggies into place in the back of his truck on the morning of Sept. 23, 2022. The food he is procuring is bound for the Long Beach Senior Center and will mostly be used up the day it’s delivered. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune) 
In between ferrying loads of donated food from a local grocery store in Long Beach, Food Finder’s volunteer Michael Remley takes a gulp of his coffee while sitting on the tailgate of his truck. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune) 
Kim Nguyen, a Food Finder’s volunteer, loads stacks of flowers donated from a local grocery store into the back of a minivan on Sept. 23, 2022. The donated flowers will be delivered to nursing and convalescent homes throughout the Long Beach area. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune)
Last year, Food Finders rescued almost 16 million pounds of food bound for the landfill, and distributed it to over 250 nonprofits to provide 13,264,000 meals across the San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside Counties, according to Bereket.
The nonprofit also salvaged over 7 billion gallons of water in 2021, “because when you throw out tomatoes, you throw out all the water it took to grow that, because it just goes into the landfill,” Bereket said.
Food Finders launched their app one month before the COVID-19 pandemic began, in what Bereket called a “stroke of luck.” The Food Finders app now helps coordinate hundreds of food pick-ups and deliveries to provide over 3,000 meals daily.
California has a 20.3% weekly food insecurity rate, meaning nearly 8 million individuals face “the occasional or constant lack of access to food,” according to the Food Finders website.
“It’s our biggest event and there’s so many elements of it, just being on the campus is amazing,” Bereket said. “It’s all local; the connectivity of our community is really important.”
Food Finders does more than delivers cans of food and boxes of produce. The nonprofit has a food hub at Admiral Kidd Park, a refrigerated container which is filled Monday through Friday with produce, dairy and high protein items.
Bereket said many of the families that use the food hub at Admiral Kidd Park belong to ethnic groups, mainly Latino and Vietnamese. When donated food differs from the meals some families are used to cooking, Food Finders holds workshops where they teach families how to cook various meals or use the donated food as substitutes in their traditional dishes.
“Part of our mission statement is not just to give people food, but to educate them and give them precious fruits and vegetables, so that they can elevate themselves out of poverty,” Bereket said.
Food for the Soul: Farm to Tableaux will be at “The Plant” on the Cal State Long Beach campus at 1250 Bellflower Blvd. on Oct. 15 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tickets range from $125 to $175 and can be purchased through the Food Finders website.
