You may have heard - we’re expanding our current operations in Chicago! We recently spoke with the CEO of Factor 75, Mike Apostal, about why his company decided that getting involved in food recovery was the right thing to do for the community they live and work in. These donations have allowed us to begin working with more recipient organizations in Chicago - we’re thrilled to be able to provide more food for more people - keep reading to learn why this is also important to Factor 75. 

1. What is Factor 75 and your role there?
Factor 75 is a premium, healthy meal delivery service that offers a full menu of fresh, fully-prepared, restaurant quality meals right to your door. Being a part of the food and beverage industry for 15+ years, I became passionate about building businesses and joined Factor 75 about 3.5 years ago, running the day to day operations.

2. How did you get involved with Replate?
Replate is an organization that our Vice President of Operations has been aware of for several years. When he approached me about Replate’s mission, I could not help but be excited about the partnership!

3. What makes Factor 75 different from other meal delivery services?
Factor 75 is nutrition for performance. We are an online subscription-based service of fresh, never frozen, fully prepared restaurant-quality meals, using the highest quality ingredients. That is where we come into play, the biggest factor in your health and wellness is food.

4. Why did you want to start donating your surplus food? Did you champion this effort?We started donating surplus food because we observed the amount of food that was going to waste across the entire country and we wanted to combat that. As an organization, we believe that we should be donating food to people, not landfills.

5. Why do you think it's important to take action against food waste/food insecurity?
As a leader at Factor 75, our mission is to deliver ingredients with integrity to help individuals achieve peak performance in their daily lives. There are too many individuals in the world that don’t even know where their next meal is coming from, never mind the quality of that meal. Factor 75 wants to play a part in helping fight hunger so that families do not need to wonder where their next meal is coming from.

6. What does your team think about the efforts you're making to donate your extra food? Do they know this is happening and/or care about it?
Our team is fully supportive of the initiative; it is a topic that is brought up in our weekly team check-ins. The entire team wants to understand how we can continue to take on initiatives that minimize our food waste.

7. Has Replate impacted your company and/or team in any way? If so, how? (Ex. became more aware of waste, changed ordering habits, etc.)
Since partnering with Replate, we can definitely see a change in how we order ingredients, forecast volumes of meals and minimize our food waste. These are all topics that are brought up in a variety of meetings.

8. What other steps is Factor 75 taking to make a positive impact on the community/planet?
As we continue to expand, we are looking for ways to reduce the impact our packaging has on the environment. There are ways we can make our packaging more eco-friendly and reusable and continuing to innovate in this department.  

Support and follow Factor75 on Facebook. If you’d like to start donating your company’s surplus food or receive food donations, head to replate.org to sign up!

California is also implementing its own statewide food recovery initiative - SB1383! Learn more here.