2025 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit

Lauren Stark is Informatics Dietitian at Harborview Medical Center overseeing the nutrient database for the Level 1 Trauma and Burn Center in the Northwest. Lauren has helped design patient and café menus for a majority of her career as a dietitian. While working at the bedside, she partnered with kitchen staff to offer a variety of foods and flavors that patients desired to increase their nutrient intake. In 2018, she developed an on-demand patient food service operation for a small hospital using sous-vided proteins and starches purchased from a commissary kitchen.

Faced with a varied patient census while needing to offer a wide variety of menu items, Lauren partnered with local food banks and shelters to provide products that would otherwise end up wasted, thus sparking her journey into food rescue. Using technology to drive forecasting and recipe development, Lauren collaborates with the Nutrition team to reduce food waste through production volumes while offering diverse options to meet the community Harborview serves. When she is not crunching numbers, she is outside in her vegetable garden and berry patch.