Novel food rescue program has volunteers deliver from store to food bank — by app

A food rescue organization is utilizing technology to coordinate volunteers who help collect for local food banks.
Eat Happy Now, which began in King County in 2022, expanded to Snohomish County in late 2024, and has about one dozen volunteers in this area collecting food from grocery stores and restaurants. Their collection efforts benefit groups such as Millennia Ministries of Everett, the Salvation Army and the Lake Stevens Community Food Bank.
“Think of us as an ‘Uber Eats’ for any surplus food in our ecosystem,” said Sharmila Rathinam, founder and CEO of Eat Happy Now. Around 70 percent of the food collected through Eat Happy Now is collected by volunteers and 30 percent is collected by the organization’s employees.
Volunteers utilize an app where they schedule times to pick up and deliver food. The food often comes from local independent and niche grocery stores.
Snohomish resident Desmond Smith had been active at the Carl Gipson Senior Center and the Volunteers of America and heard about Eat Happy Now.
Being retired, he was able to help on Tuesdays. He normally collects between 80-140 pounds of food that he delivers to food banks. He communicates with a business via the app, so they know he’s on the way. That way donated food is ready when he arrives.
“They have big hearts, and they understand the need,” Smith said of the businesses that donate to Eat Happy Now.
Rathinam said the pickups and drop-offs are scheduled a month in advance. “It’s a very predictable volunteer schedule.”
She added that Eat Happy Now is collecting from such businesses as European Grocery store, Carniceria Los Compadres, J-Bro’s Gluten-Free Market, Grocery Singh and the Tom Thumb Grocery in Lake Stevens.
“We are going after those stores where food rescue is non-existent,” Rathinam said. The donations also fill gaps by providing more culturally appropriate options for food banks.
“It allows us to stretch the other food we have for a little bit longer,” said Leilani Miller, the executive director of Millennia Ministries, who described the help from Eat Happy Now as “almost a game changer.”
Millenia Ministries uses the support from Eat Happy Now, which the organization receives Tuesdays, for a meal on Wednesdays. She said the Asian meals have proven popular. In addition, the group has distributed around 60,000 bags worth of groceries in a year and has helped seniors, veterans and families in transitional housing.
Eat Happy Now collected 675,000 pounds of food, which is equal to 500,000 meals, Rathinam said. The organization was founded in 2022 in Bellevue and has 475 registered volunteers.
She noted that 10 percent of the population in Washington are food insecure. She hopes that Eat Happy Now will reach 1 million meals rescued by the end of the year and she hope the organization will reach 10 percent of the state’s food insecure in 2026.