
City Harvest
The Challenge: Every day, many Manhattan businesses have small amounts of food they can’t sell and wish to donate to people in need. This charitable impulse created a logistics nightmare. Could city-optimized food rescue be done sustainably?
The Revolution Rickshaws Solution: A fleet of three City-Harvest-branded freight trikes pedaled by Teamsters roll from location to location collecting the donated food and bringing it quickly to City Harvest’s identified centers of need nearby.
Results: Using Revolution Rickshaws, City Harvest rescues more than half a million pounds of food per year. Waste is avoided, and people in need are being fed. City Harvest’s execs peg the annual value of the program’s daily Midtown marketing exposure alone from the branded freight trikes rolling daily in the central business district at approximately $2 million. Fleet expansion, which will enable optimized performance, is under discussion.