Mustard Seed

Change due to COVID-19: Food orders will be placed in dock bay doors and agencies will pick up outside of the warehouse.

Hours are 9AM-2PM

The Mustard Seed’s role in Food Rescue.

The Mustard Seed Street Church works with local retailers and grocers to redistribute fresh, nutritious foods through the Food Share Network (FSN).

Six days a week, our trucks pick up fresh produce and dairy products from generous grocery stores and bring them to our Food Security Distribution Centre. Home to the Food Rescue Project, this 13,500 sq. foot facility operated by The Mustard Seed Street Church accepts 4,000+ pounds of “rescued food” each day. This food would have otherwise ended up in the waste stream!

The food we rescue and deliver is mostly perishable; fruits, vegetables, milk, and meat. This is all perfectly good food that has been donated because it is close to expiry, overstocked, mislabeled or has damaged packaging.

(Thanks in large part to the generosity of Vancity Enviro Fund, Victoria Foundation and The B.C. Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, our Food Security Distribution Centre was purchased in 2019)

A member of the Food Share Network.

Donated food is then “gleaned, cleaned” by a host of Mustard Seed volunteers, packaged and then redistributed to more than 62 FSN member agencies.

The creation of the Food Rescue Project has made it possible to connect excess food with those in our community who need it most; impacting an estimated 35,000 people monthly! The FSN supplies member agencies in the greater Victoria and Duncan area including the Woman’s Transition House, Our Place, Salvation Army as well as several Indigenous communities, school food programs, senior housing and The Mustard Seed!

Our commercial kitchen at the Distribution Centre. Once this space if fully functional, this kitchen will allow us to process rescued food into sauces, soups and stocks for further redistribution, while reducing waste output from 8% to 3%!

Benefits to our community and the environment.

The Food Rescue Project has created reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, culturally appropriate and nutritious food. In addition to increasing food access, the project has created opportunities for food literacy, education around nutrition, ecology and the importance of the local food economy. Rescued food will be a tool to nourish and connect to people as well as create opportunities for skills development.

In the last year alone, more than 1 million pounds of perishable food has been rescued from the waste stream in the last year; preventing over 600,000 pounds of green house gas equivalents from entering our atmosphere.