A new initiative at the University of South Carolina is helping provide meals for students facing food insecurity while also reducing waste.

Feed the Flock is a food sustainability and food security initiative that reclaims surplus food and packages it into individual ready-to-eat meals for distribution to the campus community in need. It is led by the USC School of Hospitality and Tourism Management and operated in partnership with Carolina Food Co. and USC CommUnity Shop.

Food insecurity is a very common issue on campuses and elsewhere. In 2022, 46.5% of USC students said they had experienced food insecurity during their college careers.

“Food pantries and non-perishable food donations are critical, but prepared meals also play an important and unique role in addressing food insecurity on our campus,” said USC Hospitality and Tourism Management Professor Scott Taylor, who leads Feed the Flock. “Feed the Flock provides access to convenient, nutritious meals – even if you aren’t able to cook something yourself. And, we’re doing it with good food that is already prepared and might otherwise go to waste.”

Since its launch this summer, Feed the Flock has already distributed more than 5,000 meals. Student, faculty and staff volunteers led by Taylor collect donated surplus food and repurpose and repackage it into ready-to-eat meals. Carolina Food Co. is the primary source of surplus prepared food donations and USC CommUnity Shop is the main distribution point for the meals. Last year, the Gamecock CommUnity Shop served over 12,000 students and visits are up 300% this year.

USC First Lady Ero Aggelopoulou-Amiridis has been a major supporter of Feed the Flock. She has helped coordinate large food donations from private events on campus, including building a partnership with Southern Way Catering, and has also volunteered to package food and speak to food sustainability classes. Food Recovery Network has also been a crucial partner, assisting with picking up and dropping off food.

Another key source of food to be repurposed came through the efforts of School of Hospitality and Tourism Management master’s student Madison Jones, house director for Kappa Delta Sorority. Aware of how fortunate she and her sorority sisters are and of how much good food goes to waste, she worked to arrange for Kappa Delta to donate to Feed the Flock, and then for other sororities to do the same.

“We have these private chefs, but a lot of students don’t have that luxury. Being able to take this food and provide it to students who are underprivileged and need resources, that’s why I come out to volunteer,” Jones says.

To keep the volunteer-powered program going, the Feed the Flock team is working to raise funds to support meal packaging supplies, logistics and distribution expansion via new refrigeration units across campus. Visit Feed the Flock - Gamecocks Helping Gamecocks to donate.

In addition to connecting sustainable food supplies to those who need them in an accessible way, Feed the Flock also teaches hospitality and tourism management students valuable career skills. A new class, Creating Community Food Security, was launched this fall by the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.

“We're really focused on building curriculum, specifically in the hospitality space, because we have a considerable role that we can play to help fight food insecurity,” Taylor says. “The hospitality business is built around food, and we have the opportunity to teach food sustainability and community outreach skills that have an exponential impact as our students become leaders in the field.”

Experts say one third of all college students face food insecurity. USC is working to fight that in many ways, and Feed the Flock is doing its part while also sustainably preventing good food from going to waste.