A recent research by EMBRAPA shows that Brazil wastes more than 40,000 tons of food everyday. Another data shows that 35% of this waste happens during food preparation, while ingredients are still good for consumption. Make Them Smile, an NGO that works as a platform of sustainability and social activities for the common wellness, decided to take action.

Being an NGO, their budget is very limited so the strategy was to find a way to do something big with little investment, and for that, the strategy was to come up with something unique and work a PR effort to get the most free media possible on and offline.

So we transformed some of this food into a new way to raise awareness against food waste. In partnership with renowed chefs in Rio, we used the agility (and the hypeness) of a food truck to collect ingredients that were going to the trash in their restaurants.

Then we quickly cooked the meals onboard to avoid deterioration and distributed all to those who need it the most: homeless people on the streets.

With all these restaurants and chefs cooking food to homeless people with ingredientes that were once destined to go to the trash, we caught the media’s attention and the idea spread all over Brazil and even other countries.

We transformed some of this food into a new way to raise awareness against food waste. In partnership with renowned chefs in Rio, we used the agility of a food truck to collect ingredients that were going to the trash directly in their restaurants.

Then we quickly cooked the meals on board and distributed to those who need it the most: homeless people on the streets.

Then we filmed all this happening and posted on the NGO’s fan page, expecting it to get everyone’s (specially the media’s) attention.

In only one month:

More than 1 ton of food collected (and therefore not wasted)

Over 300 homeless people fed

More than 2,000 meals distributed

25 of the top restaurants in Rio participating

2 of the Top 10 chefs in Brazil joined

With $0 invested in media, we got more than 3 million dollars worth of coverage

The “Feed Truck” became the main topic one of Brazil´s most watched TV shows – “Caldeirao do Huck” in Globo TV

Millions of people impacted on social networks