What We Do
The Friendly Fridge BX is the first community fridge in the Bronx. Since its inception on May 21, 2020, the Fridge now redirects over 65,000 pounds of healthy produce and prepared meals per month away from the landfills, instead going directly into the hands of the community.
Over the nearly six years since our inception, we’ve learned a tremendous deal about food waste, its impact on the environment around us and the power it holds to alleviate hunger for so many. The Friendly Fridge BX is all about community-based solutions.
Our mission is to create a hyper-local ecosystem of care rooted in community-led problem solving. While our work began and continues to focus on food rescue and redirection—ensuring fresh healthy food reaches folks instead of landfills—we have learned that food access is only one part of a larger landscape of unmet needs. In response, our mission has expanded to inviting community members to experiment and create solutions that address multiple gaps in access.
We work to normalize food redirection as both an environmental and social solution—engaging students in understanding the systems behind food waste, while equipping schools and local businesses with the knowledge and support needed to legally and safely redirect surplus food into meaningful community impact. By sharing knowledge about the Bill Emerson Act, which protects food donors and redistributors under federal law, we help remove fear-based barriers and expand participation in food rescue efforts.
We rescue and redistribute surplus food from a growing network of generous partners throughout the Bronx and beyond into New York City. Every day, our volunteers collect and share fresh, edible food that would otherwise be discarded, including donations from local schools, farms, farmers markets, bakeries, restaurants, and pantries.
Together, we redirect well over 70,000 pounds of food each month—primarily fresh produce and prepared meals—and now serve over 1,800 visits per week. This number reflects only our three largest distribution days and does not include the remaining four days when the food hub operates as a publicly accessible community refrigerator, open to anyone who passes by.
What We’ve Done and Continue to Do:
Partner with several schools, pantries, community centers, farms, CSAs and other organizations to redirect extra foods directly into the community
Partner with nearby schools, churches, temples and restaurants who are aligned in this mission to ensure safe and timely redirection of prepared food
Support us in our mission to redirect tons of good produce!
Follow Our Journey.
