Jews in the D

I

n early June, City Covenant 
Church’
s food pantry in 
Detroit found themselves 
with 20 pounds of excess Italian 
sausage crumbles. So Chad 
Techner, a funeral director at the 
Ira Kaufman Chapel, 
picked up the sausage, 
paired it with another 
donation of ground 
beef and made pasta 
sauce in a 15-gallon 
pot. Together with the 
help of his 3-year-old 
son, Eli, they packaged the pasta 
and sauce into quart containers, 
and helped Hazon, a nonprofit 
Jewish organization in Detroit 
dedicated to environmental sus-
tainability, deliver it to local pan-
tries to serve to their clients. 
“There’
s all of this excess food 
and also all of these people who 
need it,” Techner said. “In today’
s 
day and age, the demand is more 
extreme than ever.”
The pasta sauce is one of sever-
al cooking projects that Techner 
has taken on since he founded a 
partner organization, Metro Food 
Rescue, to assist Hazon in its food 

rescue initiative. With the help of 
Metro Food Rescue and Hazon’
s 
dedicated volunteers, Hazon has 
serviced a network of more than 
45 Detroit-area pantries and saved 
more than 115,000 pounds of food 
since June 24, when they began 
tracking. 
Techner, who attended Western 
Culinary Institute in Portland, 
Ore., says his inspiration for Metro 
Food Rescue and a partnership 
with Hazon comes from a long-
term concern about food waste 
and insecurity. His experience 
in the culinary industry has also 
given him a unique ability to 
understand food dis-
tribution on a large 
scale and the cooking 
skills necessary to get 
creative with food 
rescue. 
“He’
s made gallons 
of spaghetti sauce 
from rescued food that we can 
take to our pantries and they can 
feed people with,” said Wren Hack, 
the executive director of Hazon. 
“His passion and dedication have 
come through so strongly.” 

AN ORIGINAL PLAN 
ADAPTED TO A TIME OF NEED
Techner said he initially met with 
Hack in early February to discuss a 
different idea for a food rescue mis-
sion: saving leftover catered food 
from large events. 
“People would call us saying they 
had tons of extra food from shivah, 
and we never had a good answer for 
what to do with it,
” Techner said. 
In early March, Metro Food 
Rescue helped Hazon salvage more 
than 250 pounds of excess catered 
food from an event at the JCC of 
Metro Detroit. Then the pandemic 
hit. Events were canceled, excess 
food went into storage and more 
people struggled to put meals on 
the table. 
“There was a lot of waste due to 
the shutdown from COVID,
” Hack 
said. “
And at the same time, the 
need for food has gone up tremen-
dously.
” 
Hack said that this greater need 
has even led several people to start 
food pantries on their front lawns. 
And while food banks are step-
ping up during this time to provide 
meals to those who are struggling, 
Techner and Hack say there tends 
to be a misallocation of food 
between pantries. 
“There are some gaps in the sys-
tem,
” Techner said. “We found that 
one pantry will have way too much 
of this but not enough of that.
” 
Hack said Hazon helps fill these 
gaps. Using Hazon’
s database of 
more than 45 pantries, Hack is able 
to determine which food banks 
need what. If one pantry has too 
much of a certain food, Hazon 
picks up the items and redistributes 
them to another in need, all while 
ensuring that the food is culturally 
sensitive to the faith-based organi-
zation receiving it. At a time where 
larger food banks are overburdened, 
Hack says that Hazon’
s allocation 
efforts are crucial to ensuring that 
no extra pantry food goes to waste. 

continued on page 14

12 | SEPTEMBER 10 • 2020 

Chad Techner

On a (Food) 
Rescue 
Mission

Local funeral director’
s organization helps 
Hazon rescue food around Metro Detroit.

Wren Hack

MADELINE HALPERT CONTRIBUTING WRITER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JERRY ZOLYNSKY

cover story

