SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - Starbucks launched its FoodShare program on Tuesday in San Diego to help ensure that its unsold food does not end up in the garbage.
On Tuesday, Starbucks employees served as volunteers to help sort and package food that will go to Feeding America to help stop the hunger crisis.
"We're picking up that food in the middle of the night and often times it's on someone's plate by noon the next day. This is going to mean 600,000 meals ti families facing hunger right here in San Diego," said Feeding America San Diego CEO, Al Brislain.
Starbucks' FoodShare program will donate ready-to-eat meals to food banks from its 7,600 company-operated stores in the U.S. Initially, this will be accomplished through an existing collaboration with Food Donation Connection and a new partnership with Feeding America.
Starbucks hopes to provide nearly five million meals to individuals and families in need of nourishing food.
"There's all these other amazing food products going out and that fact that Starbucks is smart enough and realizes and is passionate enough to want to do something with the food that they would normally be throwing in the garbage," said popular chef Brian Malarkey.
The coffee giant intends to scale this program over the next five years and rescue 100 percent of its food available for donation from participating company-operated U.S. stores. That amounts to almost 50 million meals by 2021.
"we care that we are listening and that we have the we are with all to be able to help," said Congresswoman Susan Davis.
In April Starbucks announced a five-year plan to donate 100-percent of its unsold food to charity.
CBS News reported in April that the federal government believes 30 to 40 percent of the nation's food supply is wasted a year. In 2014, nearly one in seven Americans lived in households that at some point were unsure where the next meal would come from.