Rethink Food

Rethink Food partners with local restaurants and corporate kitchens, paying them a per-meal stipend to prepare chef-quality meals using rescued or donated ingredients. The organization distributes these heat-and-serve meals through community-based outlets like shelters, food pantries, and public housing sites. The model keeps restaurant kitchens working during slow hours while maintaining quality standards absent in most emergency food systems.

Matt Jozwiak founded the organization in 2016 and serves as CEO. Before launching Rethink, he spent five years at Eleven Madison Park under chef Daniel Humm, rising to executive sous chef. That fine-dining background shaped the organization's insistence on restaurant-quality production standards and its focus on compensating culinary professionals.

Rethink operates in five major US cities — New York City (headquarters), Chicago, San Francisco, Nashville, and Miami — plus a satellite kitchen program in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Expansion has been incremental, typically triggered by a committed restaurant partner or institutional distribution partner in the target market.

Rethink maintains a dual-revenue model. Roughly half its funding comes from philanthropic grants and individual donations; the other half comes from earned revenue through a for-profit arm, Rethink Food NYC, which sells reimbursable meals to schools and daycare centers under USDA or state programs. The earned-income stream reduces volatility when grant cycles shift.

Unlike large-scale food-rescue operations that redistribute bulk ingredients, Rethink pays partner restaurants to produce finished, ready-to-eat meals. The organization also employs culinary professionals at market wages rather than relying on volunteer labor. This positions Rethink as both a hunger-relief organization and a workforce-stabilization vehicle for the restaurant industry.

During the pandemic, Rethink pivoted to fund struggling independent restaurants to produce meals for food-insecure households — effectively turning the restaurants into paid commissaries while keeping their staff employed. The organization delivered millions of meals across its operating cities during 2020-2021, attracting significant institutional funding as cities sought ways to inject capital into hard-hit restaurant sectors.

No ongoing legal or structural relationship exists. Founder Matt Jozwiak's professional background at Eleven Madison Park shaped Rethink's operational standards, and Daniel Humm publicly supported the organization's early fundraising efforts, but the entities are organizationally independent.