One of our donor members, Lever, shared their insights with us about why donating surplus food and giving back is important to their company and team members. Timadge Berkhadley gave us the inside scoop for this Community Story.

What is Lever?

Lever is a mid sized startup based in San Francisco that builds modern recruiting software for teams to source, interview, and hire top talent. For the past 6 years, we’ve been on a mission to help connect talent with meaningful work.

How did you get get involved with Replate?

We’ve been involved with Replate for a couple years. At the time, I was the Office Manager for Lever and reached out to Replate for an opportunity to give a little back to our community. We offer daily catered lunch to employees and would often have leftovers, it pained me to see food going to waste. I met Maen when Replate was small -- he introduced Replate and the concept around donating to local charities and I knew it would be a great match for Lever. We were located in the Tenderloin at the time, an area in San Francisco that has many needs. It was important to me that Lever worked with companies that were mission focused, and when I learned that Replate partnered with organizations such as St Vincent De Paul and DISH it was a win-win. It’s great to see that Lever can help out, even in a small way, by giving back to organizations that are doing amazing things in our community.

Why did you want to start donating your surplus food?

Personally, it is the right thing to do. We all have an obligation and as a company to do more. It’s one thing that just made sense. Why let food go to waste when the food can go to a well intentioned place that needs it more than us just throwing it away? If we have an opportunity to do it and doesn’t cost a lot on our end, we’d rather it go to place that needs it.

Why do you think it's important to take action against food waste and food insecurity?

Every one of our employees knows how fortunate we are to have food provided at work, we try our best to be a community-minded organization and connect our team with volunteer opportunities locally as well. By taking small actions like helping to reduce food waste in our office, we create dialogue between our employees about how they can also do more for the community, especially around the holidays.

Has Replate impacted your company or team in any way?

Beyond better connecting Lever to organizations doing great work in our community, it’s been a godsend from an operational aspect. We’ve gotten to know the delivery team well, and it makes my team’s work a bit easier knowing we have a set pick up schedule and we can do our part to reduce food waste in San Francisco.

What other steps is Lever taking to make a positive impact on the community and planet?

We have a “Lever Gives Back” Slack channel, employees will post about different volunteering opportunities. We consistently have a group of Leveroos that volunteer at Project Open Hand to help prep meals for the sick and elderly. Earlier this year we focused our efforts in the Tenderloin, I wanted to help create an opportunity to immerse everyone in our neighborhood. We successfully contributed over 300+ hours in one work week. Imagine what any company can do if we all focused on the impact of giving back.

Support and follow Lever’s work on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you’d like to start donating your company’s surplus food or receive food, go to replate.org to sign up!