About Kingston Food Rescue

Our Story

Kingston Food Rescue began when a group of community members saw two problems existing side by side: good food being thrown away, and neighbors going hungry. Three founders and a community partner came together to build a system that moves food at the speed hunger demands.

The Founders

Three journeys. One purpose: Get food to people who need it.

Conny Glenn

The System Architect

"Community isn't built by chance—it's built by systems that make affordability the foundation."

Conny Glenn has spent her career inside the systems where failure carries real human cost—families in crisis, youth justice, healthcare, government regulation, and communities under sustained economic pressure. She didn't observe from a distance. She was in the room, reimagining and rebuilding one piece at a time.

Across sectors, she saw the same pattern repeat: people were not failing—systems were. The failures were structural, predictable, and therefore fixable. Her life's work has been grounded in human factors, the discipline of designing systems around how people actually live. That perspective shaped her work as the inaugural President of the College of Kinesiologists of Ontario. Building a public system that established standards of practice and provided public-protection mechanisms—reducing harm upstream and strengthening a profession. It reinforced a core lesson: when institutions are designed well, people can thrive; when they are not, harm becomes inevitable. That same systems thinking underpins the Kingston Dignified Housing Strategy, which carries her blueprint. Food security is not separate from housing. You cannot stabilize a family while they are choosing between rent and groceries. You cannot build community while people are fighting for survival. For Conny, commissioning Kingston Food Rescue was not charity; it was infrastructure—the part of the system designed to catch people before they fall, so the rest of the system has a chance to lift them up.

Melissa Reid

From Survivor to Commander

"I've fallen through every crack this city has. Now I know exactly where to stand guard."

Melissa Reid learned early that when systems fail, someone has to step up. She became that someone at twelve when her father died. She stayed that someone through her grandmother's murder, through her children's serious illnesses, through twenty years navigating addiction and broken safety nets.

She doesn't talk about those years to inspire pity. She talks about them because they taught her exactly where the cracks are—and who falls through them. In 2021, she got sober. Then she got certified: Data Collection and Program Evaluation for the Homelessness Sector. Low-Barrier, Gender-Focused Housing. She didn't just want to help—she wanted to prove, with data, what works and what doesn't. Today she runs POET from Belle Park—the same site where Kingston Food Rescue delivers meals. Her Winter Initiative keeps 38 volunteers mobilized in shifts when temperatures drop. When it's -18°C, her teams don't go home. They stay on-site, 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., making sure nobody freezes. Her approach to food rescue is the same as her approach to everything: no drama, no delays. Food appears, volunteers move it, people eat. The system works because she built it to work.

Jeff McLaren

The Builder Who Won't Quit

"Good ideas die when people retreat into comfort. I'm not interested in comfort. I'm interested in results."

Jeff McLaren came to city council as an outsider who'd spent years watching good people lose their footing—not because they failed, but because the systems around them were built for a different era.

He proposed Limestone City Co-operative Housing: permanently affordable homes with integrated food production, climate resilience, and real community. Council rejected it. Twice. Most people would have stopped. Jeff kept building. A coin toss sent him to Finland, where he saw a country that treats housing and food security as infrastructure, not charity. He came back knowing LCCH wasn't radical—it was standard practice in places that actually solve these problems. That trip crystallized everything into the Kingston Dignified Housing Strategy: emergency systems, transitional housing, permanent affordable homes, and food systems woven together. Kingston Food Rescue is one piece of that architecture—the rapid-response layer that catches surplus food before it's wasted and routes it to people before they go hungry. Jeff doesn't do half-measures. When he and Melissa built KFR's technology, they built it to be boring, reliable, and obvious—because when someone's hungry, the last thing they need is a clever app that doesn't work.

Community Partner

Feed the People — The Inspiration for KFR

Michelle Schwarz

The One Who Wouldn't Walk Past

"We've already done the groundwork. We know how to do it. We know the population. We even know their allergies. We just need help."

Michelle Schwarz saw bags of rice and pasta piling up in the corner of the hub. Donated food, rotting. Going in the garbage. Because there was nowhere to cook it and 80 people outside who needed to eat. She didn't write a report. She didn't form a committee. She said, "We can turn this into food," found a handful of cooks, and started showing up every day with massive pots of soup.

That was during COVID. Feed the People started in her car, with volunteers cooking in their own kitchens and Michelle driving the food to wherever people were—encampments in the woods, the hub parking lot, street corners. Soup became stew. Stew became salad and sandwiches. A few volunteers became dozens. Then in September 2023, the hub shut down without warning. Residents were evacuated so fast one woman didn't have her shoes. Michelle refrigerated the soup she'd been about to deliver and thought: they're going to be going somewhere. So she followed them. For weeks, Feed the People set up on the corner—canopies, tables, volunteers—waiting to be let back in. They weren't. So they moved to Belle Park and kept going. Wind collapsed the first tent. A storm destroyed the second. They served out of the backs of their cars until they could fundraise for a carport. Today, Feed the People serves over 100 meals a day at Belle Park—the same site where Kingston Food Rescue delivers surplus food. Michelle still arrives every day playing Trooper's "We're Here for a Good Time" with the windows down. Sometimes people dance. Her rule is simple: know their names. Every regular, every face, every story. Feed the People has no barriers. People show up intoxicated, unwell, in crisis—they get fed. "We would never, ever, ever deny them food." Feed the People was the inspiration for Kingston Food Rescue. Michelle proved that surplus food and hungry people don't have to exist side by side—you just need volunteers willing to move fast and a system that gets out of their way.

What We Do

Kingston Food Rescue connects surplus food with those who need it through a simple, efficient system. Producers post available food, drivers volunteer to transport it, and storage sites or places of need receive the food to distribute to the community. No food wasted. No one left hungry.

Join as Producer Join as Driver Join as Storage Join as Place of Need

The Work Continues

Four people. Four different paths. One shared conviction: When food is available and people are hungry, the only question is how fast you can move it.

Kingston Food Rescue exists because Conny, Melissa, Jeff, and Michelle refuse to accept that waste and hunger should exist side by side.

No nonsense. No delays. Just food reaching people who need it.