When the City of Cleveland recently closed the Eastside Market, a grocery store in the Glenville neighborhood overseen by a troubled nonprofit, officials had to quickly run a rescue mission. The objective: Get the food left on the shelves into the hands of the needy before it would spoil.
The night before it closed, the store appeared to be stocked at nearly full capacity: clementines, lemons and strawberries lined the produce shelves. Canned, bagged and frozen food remained, too: potato chips, applesauce, ice cream.
The city arranged to donate food from the market to the Hunger Network, which collects and distributes food that would otherwise go to waste. The Hunger Network handled most of it – a huge haul for the nonprofit, which removed six to eight pallets of frozen food alone, said Roger Himmelright, the organization’s food rescue program director…