2022 Food Waste Solutions Summit
May 10-12, 2022 | Minneapolis, MN
Anna Hammond
Founder and CEO
Matriark Foods
Bio:
Anna Hammond is the founder and CEO of Matriark Foods. Matriark upcycles farm surplus and vegetable trim from fresh-cut facilities into healthy products for food service: schools, hospitals, corporate cafeterias, foodbanks—simultaneously diverting waste from landfills while creating greater access to healthy food. Matriark has participated in the Food Systems 6 accelerator, the Huhtamaki Circular Economy program, and the Kroger Zero Waste Zero Hunger accelerator for which they won the peer-selected investment. Matriark was also selected to participate in the Foodbuy accelerator program for minority and women-owned businesses and has national distribution with Sysco and US Foods. Before launching Matriark, Hammond built a healthy eating program for youth and families living in public housing in New York City.
Schedule
Thursday, May 21
9:00am - 10:15am
“Home Grown: How Place, Culture, and Policy Are Shaping the Future of Food Waste in North Carolina—and Beyond”
Mainstage
Welcome to North Carolina, a state with a food story that is richer, more complex, and instructive than most. This session uses North Carolina as a lens through which to examine food waste from angles that rarely share the same stage: we’ll share research on household food waste patterns across the state; shine a spotlight on Black farmers and cultural foodways and the role of heritage and community food traditions in shaping the broader food system; and host a conversation about how new policies ripple through food culture—and how food culture, in turn, shapes what becomes politically possible. From farm to kitchen to community table, North Carolina offers a vivid illustration of how place-based knowledge, cultural identity, and policy momentum can reinforce or undermine one another—and how you can move the needle when you take the whole picture into account.
Also during this mainstage session, we’ll introduce a panel of founders/CEOs to the stage who will share candid reflections on what it took to grow their solutions from early-stage ideas into mainstream impact—offering hard-won lessons on how innovation and investment align for success.
Thursday, May 21
10:45am - 11:45am
"The Missing Piece: Building the Data Foundation for Food Waste Solutions in Manufacturing"
Breakout
Manufacturing is one of the largest blind spots in food waste research. It is responsible for substantial losses and cascading effects across the supply chain, however, it remains poorly understood and quantified. But that’s changing. Over the past year, LIDD partnered with ReFED on a first-of-its-kind research effort to quantify and characterize food waste across diverse manufacturing settings and food types. These findings will power critical updates to ReFED’s Insights Engine and ongoing analyses. This session will explore what that data reveals, through two complementary perspectives on food loss and waste in manufacturing. Speakers will reflect both the on-the-ground realities and solution pathways: an upcycling company working to reintegrate surplus into the human food supply, and a prepared meals manufacturer sharing the operational challenges, constraints, and opportunities to act on waste within their facilities. Together, they will highlight what it takes to move from insight to action, and where the most promising opportunities lie. This session will be a case study in what’s possible when rigorous research and cross-sector collaboration point the way toward solutions that are actionable and built to scale.