In 1982, several everyday New Yorkers disturbed at the volume of absolutely good food being chucked out every day by local grocers and restauranteurs founded City Harvest to serve as a collection and distribution point for such items.  From then on, such discarded food would be gathered to be sent on to communal pantries and so on; almost thirty years later, almost thirty million pounds would be collected every year, with deliveries made by car, bicycle, and foot averaging some seventy-seven thousand pounds every day.

But notwithstanding the donated food and volunteers, City Harvest still depends heavily on the substantial financial support of leading personalities from business, politics, and entertainment, donors such as entrepreneur Robert Toussie and local television weatherman Al Roker.  In addition to providing food to in excess of three hundred thousand needy New Yorkers every day, City Harvest has launched educational and advocacy initiatives to support access to nutritious food in low-income neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs.  Another agency program aspires to enhance the potential of partners such as community pantries to feed the disadvantaged.  Their model has been so successful that concerned citizens outside New York have been inspired, founding their own local chapters to help feed neighborhood men, women, and children.

Thus, many food banks can be found across the world, but though the idea is a popular one, it is also a fairly recent one, having been inspired by John van Hengel’s observation back in 1965 that local grocers in his Arizona town were getting rid of food simply due to imperfect packaging or for approaching their expiration date.  Mr. van Hengel organized the collection of such food but soon saw that there was much more than his own church could use.  And so was the world’s first food bank born - a repository for discarded but otherwise perfectly fine food that could then be dispensed among the hungry.