Princeton, NJ — [January-18-2024] — Share My Meals (SMM), a Princeton-based nonprofit dedicated to serving food-insecure communities in New Jersey and preventing harmful environmental impacts from food waste, marks its two-year collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), a Princeton-headquartered multinational pharmaceutical company. BMS is SMM’s longest standing meal donor. Earlier this year, the BMS CLIMB People and Business Resource Group (PBRG) Lawrenceville chapter enhanced the partnership by standing up an employee volunteer program.
Between December 2021 and November 2023, over 27,000 meals were recovered from cafeterias across Bristol Myers Squibb’s five New Jersey sites, saving 34,387 lbs of food and avoiding 151,970 lbs of CO2 eq.
“At Bristol Myers Squibb we seek to actively improve the communities where we live, work and serve,” said Craig Johnson, Vice President, Global Engineering & Facilities, Bristol Myers Squibb. “Helping people in our community have access to food and minimizing food waste are important parts of that commitment. I am proud of what we have accomplished in collaboration with Share My Meals over the past two years. There is still much work to be done but together we can help address food insecurity and work toward a better future.”
“Driving the initiative to enhance the collaboration with standing up an employee volunteer program has been such a rewarding experience. The Share My Meals team has worked with us hand in hand with overcoming obstacles and streamlining the delivery process. This program gave us an opportunity to see firsthand how much BMS cares about the community and commitment to sustainability. We look forward to making a continuing impact as we grow our program and partnership with SMM.”- CLIMB LVL Team (Maggie Cosgrove, Shivangi Srivastava, Victoria DiBuono)
The cafeterias at Bristol Myers Squibb, run by Sodexo and Sodexo Magic, serve a variety of food options for employees at their New Jersey offices. Providing this level of choice and convenience means some waste is inevitable, and the Sodexo and Sodexo Magic teams are grateful their surplus cooked food is made available to those who need it.
At the end of food service each day, the kitchen staff at Bristol Myers Squibb, Chef Anthony Perrotti and staff, portion the food into reusable trays provided by Share My Meals. BMS CLIMB Volunteers or Share My Meals’ driver collects the trays from the cafeterias and either delivers them to the Share My Meals hub for the home delivery program or brings the prepared meals to community partners, such as The Boys & Girls Club of Trenton, Anchor House, and Rescue Mission, who then distribute the meals. Share My Meals tracks each meal recovered and delivered by barcode to ensure all food safety requirements are met.
Share My Meals Chief Executive Officer, Helene Lanctuit, says, “I started out as a Board member with Share My Meals, and Bristol Myers Squibb was our first meal donor partner. I am, and have been, grateful and impressed with the level of generosity and passion the employees at Bristol Myers Squibb always share with us. The BMS team has become a critical partner in helping support our neighbors’ access to nutritional health stability for themselves and their families. We are excited to continue growing this partnership and learning together how we can best support our food insecure neighbors while reducing food waste and making positive impacts on the environment.”
Photo Caption: (L) Lori Schmid, of BMS CLIMB, sets out to deliver meals from Share My Meals’ headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey; behind her is (R) Eszter Koos, Operations Director at Share My Meals.
About Share My Meals
Share My Meals is a 501 (c)3 nonprofit organization, incorporated in NJ, that serves the food insecure community in the Princeton area, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, gender identity or expression, disability, age, or faith.
The organization works to alleviate hunger and food waste through the distribution of reclaimed meals from large corporate cafeterias, hospitals, schools, universities, and caterers to individuals and families experiencing food insecurity in the Princeton area and northern New Jersey.
Founded in 2020, Share My Meals is committed to rebalancing the food equation: Less Food Waste = Less Hunger. For more information visit: www.sharemymeals.org.
Press Contact: Dina Paulson [email protected]
