Together, they captured a day in the life of Metro Food Rescue — and the lives that were changed by a simple good deed.
When Chad Techner of Metro Food Rescue, an Oakland County nonprofit that helps prevent food waste by distributing it back into the community, checked his phone in between food rescue stops, he wasn’t expecting an email from CBS Evening News.
“When I’m on the road, I like to check my emails to see if there’s anything urgent to reply to,” Techner, 41, of West Bloomfield, says. Techner, who also works at the Ira Kaufman Chapel and serves on the Gesher Human Services executive board, is no stranger to receiving many emails, but didn’t realize the opportunity this particular one would lead to.
The email inquiry was from a producer at CBS Evening News who was working on a story about food waste. After chatting with Techner for 15 minutes about the work of Metro Food Rescue, she said to him, “I think you’re the one to tell this story.”
A few weeks later, CBS Evening News hit the ground running. They sent an entire crew to Metro Detroit to spend a day filming the work of the nonprofit organization. The crew included the producer who initially contacted Techner, a camera guy, an audio tech, a correspondent from Chicago and two security personnel.
Techner’s friend and local photographer Brad Ziegler also joined the group to help take behind-the-scenes photos of the CBS Evening News production. All in all, there were seven vehicles following the Metro Food Rescue truck throughout its missions.
Together, they captured a day in the life of Metro Food Rescue — and the lives that were changed by a simple good deed.
Feeding the Community
Filming began at Metro Food Rescue’s first stop at Jewish food pantry Yad Ezra, which is one of the organization’s main partners.
“They had non-perishables that were not kosher,” Techner explains, “so we picked that up and went down to the Seward Sharing Table.”
The Seward Sharing Table is a tent in Detroit’s New Center neighborhood where the community can drop off food for people in need. “We do a big drop there every Tuesday,” Techner says. “We’ll drop off a couple pallets of food, and then the community comes out and takes whatever they like or can utilize what we dropped off.”
Next on the agenda was a stop at the Oakland County Farmers Market in Waterford, where Metro Food Rescue picked up bread and produce to then deliver to social services organizations Oakland Hope and Lighthouse in Pontiac.
“We started at Yad Ezra and literally went from Detroit to Pontiac and everywhere in-between,” Techner says.
A Group Effort
Still, this is a typical day for Metro Food Rescue, which is on track to rescue more than 1.5 million pounds of food this year.
Over the course of nearly seven hours of filming, CBS Evening News captured it all, interviewing donors, recipients and the Metro Food Rescue team about the impact of these missions.
“It was exciting and overwhelming,” Techner says of being selected for the story. “It was truly an honor. We’re all doing amazing work.”
Metro Food Rescue was scheduled to appear as an evening segment on CBS Evening News during the week of Dec. 19, though the exact date isn’t set yet. Techner hopes more people can learn about the organization’s mission to help support Metro Detroiters in need.
At the end of the day, however, he gives credit to the community — particularly that of Metro Detroit. “I could have only done this here in this community,” he says of Metro Food Rescue’s work. “The support that I’ve gotten since day one has been amazing.”