Lens on Leadership: with Cassie McDonough-Rice
From our Board of Directors to our Culinary Board, Friends Advisory Board, and Community Advisory Boards, we’re fortunate to have many incredible people among our lot. They lend their personal and professional experience in different ways to inform our work, make connections, and grow support for Spoonfuls. Every month, we introduce you to one of them!
This month, it’s Cassie McDonough-Rice: Member of Lovin’ Spoonfuls’ MetroWest Community Advisory Board and Manager with JP Licks.
I was first introduced to Lovin’ Spoonfuls when I worked as the Store Manager of Pressed, a Boston-based juice company. Pressed partnered with the new Whole Foods Market in Sudbury for a time, and we used Lovin’ Spoonfuls as one of our vendors. The Food Rescue Coordinator was always so helpful, and you could tell they were passionate about what they did. It was contagious. Since then, Lovin’ Spoonfuls has made a profound impact on me, and I have always kept them in mind.
Working in the food and beverage industry for nearly 10 years, I’ve been saddened to see so much food get wasted. I remember working at a local coffee shop as a barista to put myself through college and being instructed by my boss to throw away trash bags full of what was considered “waste.” In reality, they were baked goods from the end of the day or ready-to-eat items that had reached their best-by date. They were all in good condition, but I was shocked at the amount of it. Why are we throwing all this away when there are people in the world facing food insecurity?
I think that companies in the food and beverage industry have an opportunity to do more when it comes to waste management and sustainability efforts. I love that Lovin’ Spoonfuls exists and can help companies do just that.
Having more free time on my hands since graduating from school, I wanted to become more involved in my community. Remembering the positive experience I had with Lovin’ Spoonfuls, I reached out and applied to the CAB. I’m interested in helping Lovin’ Spoonfuls deepen their reach to food retailers and nonprofits in the community.
Being a leader in the food and beverage industry, I have heavily focused on waste management. This means keeping an eye on [inventory] pars so as to not order more than necessary to reduce the amount of perishable food items. It also has meant partnering with the community. For instance, connecting local gardeners with a surplus of used coffee grounds they can put in their gardens.
My fiancé and I are both vegetarians, so we usually have a lot of produce at home. If there are any scraps or parts that we don’t want to eat but are still okay to use, we’ll feed them to our three guinea pigs as a treat! They are a good clean-up crew.
I also like to make banana chocolate chip muffins with overly ripened bananas or use old lemons as household cleaning agents.
Learn more about our Community Advisory Boards.