The Logistics of Doing Good

Komal Ahmad

03.11.20

500 perishable gourmet sandwiches in the trunk of her car... and no one to take them. Why is doing the right thing so hard? It's the inspiration for a brilliant solution.

Summary:

500 perishable gourmet sandwiches in the trunk of her car… and no one to take them. Why is doing the right thing so hard? It’s the inspiration for a brilliant solution.

Hooray! Komal picks up 500 perishable gourmet sandwiches to give to the hungry. But who will take them? Then inspiration strikes.

Komal_Ahmad

Komal Ahmad

So essentially students picking up food from our dining halls or on-campus events or stadium arena and then redistributed that directly to the community. Great start hugely inefficient. You know one day I'm sitting in class in our dining hall manager calls and he's like hey Komal you know no one came to this event so we have 500 gourmet sandwiches. They need to be picked up in two hours otherwise we're gonna have to throw them away because we need the fridge space, so do you want them? I'm like yeah I want them. He's like great come get them you have two hours. Mind you I'm still sitting in class and so I grabbed my bag I dash across campus.

I jump into a zip car I go through all these one-way streets of tour loading dock and they begin loading this food into the trunk of my car and it's perishable food supposed to move as quickly as possible and so I'm blasting the AC while I frantically trying to get these sandwiches in the trunk and I finally do when I slam the trunk and I'm like thank God this is amazing food of course there's gonna be nonprofits that want it and so then I proceeded to call 30-plus nonprofits in Berkeley in Oakland even as far as Richmond like hey I have this amazing food could you use it hey I have 500 gourmet sandwiches do we need them? A third of them don't answer the phone a third of them say no we're okay we don't need anymore food today thanks and then the last third like actually you know what we could use 10 sandwiches or 15 sandwiches like great now 485 sandwiches.

I swear it was something my inner salvation grandmother I'm like a you you look so skinny take this food take it eat it. Just like a random people on the street I remember being pulled over to the side of the road so frustrated thinking you know why is it so hard to do a good thing you know why is it so hard to do the right thing and while these hungry people at and I said one in four well where are they when I have this amazing food to give them and it was this frustration that was essentially the birth of my inspiration. I thought how much more effective how much more efficient this whole process would be if those who have food could say hey we have food and those in need of food could say hey we could use that food and we matched these two people clear the marketplace and solve a real problem for both of them. So essentially like a match.com for sandwiches.