Why We Exist
How It Started
On May 18, 2020—the seventh anniversary of Michael Raven’s passing—the idea for the Friendly Fridge BX was born. Michael was deeply passionate about making healthy food accessible to everyone and advocated relentlessly for fresh produce in communities where it was difficult to find. He often said, “No one should go hungry.”
That day, we came across an Instagram post about a community refrigerator that had been installed on a sidewalk in Harlem. The idea was beautifully simple: share what you have and take what you need—no applications, no identification and no questions asked.
Three days later, with electricity generously provided by The Last Stop, the Friendly Fridge BX became the first community fridge in the Bronx.
From the beginning, people from every walk of life stopped by. Parents, senior citizens, students, home care attendants, cab drivers and neighbors found fresh produce, milk, prepared meals and other food that could help make their weekly groceries stretch a little further.
As one woman told us, “Hunger has no name.”
From Community Fridge to Community Food Hub
As the Fridge grew, we began to see two problems that could help solve each other: people needed greater access to fresh, healthy food, while enormous amounts of perfectly good food were being thrown away.
The food was already here. What was missing was a way to connect it with the people who could use it. So we built one.
Today, the Friendly Fridge BX is a community food hub, powered by volunteers and a growing network of over 30+ restaurants, schools, universities, bakeries, markets, farms, food rescue organizations and neighbors.
Our model focuses on hyper-local food redirection: whenever possible, food that is rescued within our community stays within our community. Keeping food close to where it originates reduces transportation, time, cost and waste while building lasting relationships among the people and organizations who live and work here. We believe this is how food rescue becomes truly sustainable.
Together, we now rescue and redirect more than 70,000 pounds of food every month—keeping good food out of landfills and putting it back into the community where it belongs.
Share what we have. Take what we need. Waste less. Take care of one another.