Where Do Our Leftovers Go? Ride Along with Food Runners!
How our longtime community partner Food Runners, now a program within ExtraFood, delivers thousands of meals every week across San Francisco.

Driver Cisco De Leon of ExtraFood drives a refrigerated truck to rescue fresh food around the Bay Area. | ExtraFood

Volunteer Jenny Qu from Food Runners rolls up to Bi-Rite Market Polk Street. | ExtraFood
Many San Franciscans — especially those who love good food — know Food Runners as a beloved local organization that rescues leftovers from restaurants and delivers them to soup kitchens. Originally founded by the one and only Mary Risley of the late great Tante Marie’s Cooking School, it started simply out of her home in 1987. Looking for a way to avoid wasting food from classes, she called up a few friends and convinced them to start driving around the city. You might fondly remember a cooking class at Tante Marie’s, or that viral video of her talking turkey, but Risley also won a James Beard Award for Humanitarian of the Year for these efforts.
After nearly four decades, Food Runners has grown to deliver tens of thousands of pounds of food every week, rescuing a total of 3.1 million pounds in 2024. Last year was a banner year for two big reasons: First of all, Risley decided to take a well-deserved retirement, and passed the torch to a like-minded nonprofit organization. Food Runners is now a program within ExtraFood, expanding its reach to SF, Marin, and Sonoma Counties. Additionally, a new California state law (SB 1383) went into effect, which requires businesses to recover fresh food that would otherwise go into landfills, one of the largest sources of methane that contributes to climate change. As a result, Food Runners and ExtraFood got an influx of new calls from grocery stores, farmers markets, and other businesses looking to donate for the first time.
Today, 30 to 40 percent of food gets wasted in America, and nearly a third of that happens at the retail level, according to the USDA. While one in four people in San Francisco doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from, a need that only deepened during the pandemic, per the SF Department of Public Health. So whether you care about fighting hunger or climate change, Food Runners’ original mission remains vitally important. “We rescue groceries to avoid them going into landfills,” says Tessa Fernandez, operations manager of Food Runners at ExtraFood. “And support the community that’s food insecure.”

A team member from Bi-Rite helps load up a volunteer’s car. | ExtraFood
Fortunately, this is nothing new at Bi-Rite, where we always try to be thoughtful about food waste. Sam Mogannam started his relationship with Food Runners back in the 90s when he would call them to collect excess food from his restaurant. He continued the relationship once he took over as owner of Bi-Rite in 1998 and has been partnering with them for 30 years. Today runners pick up several days a week from our Markets on 18th Street and Divisadero, and six days a week from Polk Street.
“Especially with the Polk Street location opening up, the community in the Tenderloin corridor was really excited to hear that a specialty grocery store was coming on board,” Fernandez says. The number one item Bi-Rite donates is our daily fresh bread, as well as seasonal produce and deli items. Fernandez says it feels like a special treat compared to canned goods. “A really nice rustic loaf of bread, a beautiful well-crafted pastry, or a noodle salad or something from the deli — people are stoked on it.”
Imagine hopping into the car with a volunteer from Food Runners, who might even be one of those OG volunteers from early days (they’re still running!). Food Runners roughly categorizes donations by size, based on whether they’ll fit into a car, truck, or van. Because Bi-Rite is a small, local grocery store, and we work hard to minimize waste, we’re considered a small pickup. So most of the time, Food Runners sends a regular person driving their own car. Pulling up to the curb, that volunteer ties on an apron and walks back through the receiving entrance to wave hello. Someone from the Bi-Rite team helps roll out a cart and load up their car with a stack of donations. With that new state law, they also track the weight, so they’ll note the number of pounds.

A donation of fresh bread and produce stacked outside Bi-Rite Market 18th Street. | ExtraFood
Then the volunteer will keep cruising down Polk Street to whichever partner organization has been scheduled for the day. Food Runners tries to keep routes simple and mileage low for volunteers, so usually they’re headed to only one drop-off. It might be the Compass Family Shelter on Polk Street, helping unhoused families transition to permanent homes; the Community Justice Center in the Tenderloin, providing mental health and drug treatment services; or Arriba Juntos in the Mission, offering training and employment opportunities. Often those recipients set out fresh food in community rooms where residents can help themselves. Sometimes they do street outreach, actually wheeling carts stacked with loaves of fresh bread around Civic Center.
In addition to Food Runners, ExtraFood also has several other programs, including Share the Bounty, which gleans extra produce from overabundant backyards, gardens, and farms. As well as Souper Food Kitchen, run by chef Heidi Krahling of Insalata’s restaurant in San Anselmo, who turns farmers market donations into a delicious stone soup every week.
Want to help? ExtraFood is always grateful for financial donations, food donations, and volunteers. And if you do sign up to be a Food Runner, who knows? You might even wind up picking up a sourdough donation from your neighborhood Bi-Rite Market.
Becky Duffett is a food writer living and eating in San Francisco. Follow her on Instagram at @beckyduffett.