One on One with Rethink Food Founder and Chief Executive Officer Matt Jozwiak.

Matt Jozwiak is the co-founder of Rethink, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing hunger by turning unused food into meals for the food-insecure.

As a college student at Kansas University, Matthew started out with the hopes of studying to become a history teacher but that quickly changed due to hardships he faced along the way and that is when he began his career in the food industry as a restaurant dishwasher. He managed to work and save some money and moved to France. He worked there for a while and later came back to the states and worked for various Michelin-star restaurants in the United States and that is when he founded Rethink Food on the fundamental idea that access to nutritious food is an essential human right. Rethink’s mission is to create a more sustainable and equitable food system in America. Today, with the help of partners such as American Express and Goldman Sachs, Rethink has developed a seamless process of taking excess food from restaurants, hotels, corporate kitchens and grocery stores and repurposing it into nutritious meals for those in need and distributed through community-based organizations - both during times of crisis and beyond.

Why Matt?

Before the interview with Matt, I had only had a glimpse of his work, what he's done, and stories that were done about Rethink and I already thought “this guy is doing such amazing work” and after talking to him, he’s ideas, ideals, career goals align with mine. He started Rethink as an organization that helps communities get food and not just food but food that is just as good as what everyone else has. There’s a lot to learn from his journey and as someone like myself who's looking to start a project that helps people is what I'm looking to do in future, especially high school and college students in Kenya I think there’s alot to take away from his experience.

Interview and insights.

The interview I had with Matt was very conversational and insightful.

The first question I asked him was if Rethink was the career he thought he would be in and he said he wanted to be a History teacher but situations and ideas changed and while working on a program to teach youth how to make nutritious food he realized access was extremely challenging and began working on a solution to bridge the gap between the billion tons of food that goes unused and the millions of people that face food insecurity which ultimately lead to the start of Rethink.

He acknowledged that despite not being what he had in mind to do career wise, he embraced the change of ideas and he said, “Ideas often change and that’s ok. The most important thing is to note that change, although not always convenient, can be good and if you’re not changing then you’re not listening to your surroundings and opportunities.”

I asked him about the challenges he faced starting a non-profit organization and the first thing he highlighted was how hard it was to get funding because no one believed in his cause. He pointed out how he got so many rejections and was told no by so many people except one person who came in and invested in him and that was Daniel Humm, the current Co-Founder who Since becoming one of Rethink Food’s first food donors in 2017, Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park has been committed to the nonprofit’s mission, and actively rethinking the restaurant model to reduce food insecurity.

Another challenge he stated was that non-profit incentives are different from an ordinary company. For profit organizations, everyone will have the same incentive, one main incentive and goal that they work towards but in non-profits, the incentives will be different. Every one will come in with their own so as a founder or someone who wants to start one, you must always be clear on your incentives from the very beginning in order to be successful.

He also noted that starting a business is not easy, especially hiring people to work for you so one must be cautious and careful of who they hire.

Insights, takeaways and next steps;

Since September 2018, Rethink Food has collected almost 150,000 pounds of food and repurposed and distributed more than 40,000 ready-to-eat and nutritionally dense meals to local soup kitchens and community centers. To help advance its mission, the organization partners with more than 20 food donors, including restaurants like Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern, and the NoMad; urban farms including Square Roots and Gotham Greens, and leading financial institutions.

These are just some of the organization’s impressive achievements and Matt highlighted that the organization is now in 5 states in the United states and hopes to expand even more to reach a global scale.

Coming from somewhere where there is also a lot of food insecurity, this organization has inspired new ideas.

One of the things that He said that stuck with me was that, “Starting a company is actually the easy part, the hard part comes in actually running it.”

Matt asked me what I would ideally like to do and I told him that I am interested in running my own non-profit for creative students in high schools and college and maybe find a way to incorporate some ideas from his company that can help find ways to help people. He gracefully offered his time to help me think over ideas and let me know that if there’s any challenges I have that I could ask him what to do and he would help.

I didn’t think I would be interested in the food industry but my mind opened up to the possibility of finding a balance between fields and incorporating them in a business.

I learnt that you don't always have to pick just one thing and just one career path when sometimes you can find ways to balance and blend many ideas.