For Leftover Love, it started with a simple observation at an Orioles game: There was a lot of food going to waste.
Instead of forgetting about it after leaving the ballpark, the organization’s founders kept asking questions.
Where did all the unsold and unused food go at the end of a game? Could food that was still perfectly good make its way to people who needed it instead?
Finding the answer took time.
After two years of conversations with the Orioles, those discussions eventually connected Leftover Love with Compass Group and opened the door to rescuing leftover food from the stadium.
Protein. Produce. Bread. Whatever was available and still good to eat could now have somewhere else to go.
And that first opportunity grew into something much bigger.
Today, Leftover Love completes 75 food rescues every week, collecting surplus food from bakeries, cafés, restaurants, and other businesses throughout the community.
Then, instead of creating a completely separate system for distributing it, Leftover Love works alongside food pantries and distribution programs that already know and serve their communities.
The rescued food helps fill their shelves and supplement what they can offer to the people who already turn to them for support.
It’s a model built on partnership — and powered by people.
More than 370 volunteers help make the rescues possible. They pick up food from participating businesses, deliver it to local pantries, and even help establish relationships with new businesses that may have food to contribute.
The result is straightforward but powerful: Food that might otherwise end up in a trash can or compost pile instead ends up on a family’s table.
And it all started because someone noticed waste and decided to ask what could be done differently.
Across Anne Arundel County, Leftover Love is showing what can happen when nonprofits, businesses, volunteers, and existing community organizations work together around a shared need.
Sometimes getting it done begins with a big idea. Sometimes it begins by looking at something everyone else has gotten used to seeing and asking a simple question:
What if we did something with this instead?
