
Our onsite Catering team at The Village Venue in San Francisco strives to be sustainable.
A challenge we ran into after large Conferences and Receptions was the amount of leftover food.
Instead of throwing away good food our Full Time Culinary Team needed to find a way to keep it from going to waste. Luckily, our Director of Catering, Alex Haseltine, found the Copia App.
Copia is a food donation service that takes, as they like to call it "Boujee" Food and deliver to family shelters and food banks in San Francisco.
How does it work?
At the end of large events, our kitchen team weighs out the product we have left and scans a VR code through the Copia app which lets them know what we have to donate.
Then drivers quickly pickup the food and makes the deliveries to food banks and shelters. Families can also make requests through the app and receive their deliveries within the same day. Copia has partnered with services like Caviar, Postmates and DoorDash to reach those in need.
Since The Village Event Space started using the Copia Service in March our very first donation provided:
100 Meals to Local Nonprofits
120 Lbs of Wasted Diverted from the Landfill
50 K Water Saved
1 K Lbs of CO2 Removed from the Atmosphere
Since than we have donated over 374lbs of food; enough to provide 311 meals. All donations have helped family shelters and veteran communities within our area Including...
Since 1984, Larkin Street Youth Services has given more than 75,000 young people a safe place to rebuild their lives. Larkin Street provides housing, education and employment training, and health and wellness supports to help young people get off the street for good.
St. Vincent De Paul: St. Vincent De Paul provides basic necessities and support to San Francisco's most vulnerable population. SVDP provides food, shelter, and hope for clients during their darkest hours, and services more than 1,000 people every day. In addition to safety-net services like food and shelter, SVDP offers access to healthcare and employment to help individuals and families rise above homelessness.
Glide: Glide offers a range of services for the poor and marginalized in the San Francisco community. Their meals program serves more than 2,000 meals per day and relies heavily on donations to provide quality meals to guests. In addition to a robust meal service, Glide provides healthcare, harm reduction programs, legal services, and more... (we are happy to have hosted the San Francisco private reception for the 19th Annual Warren Buffett Power Lunch Auction at our venue! Thanks to Madrone Studios for the Audio Visual & Streaming)
Host your event at The Village Venue in San Francisco, you will not only have an amazing space for your attendees experience but your event will give back to the local San Francisco community...email us to book your event and make a difference!
Learn more about Copia, from their Founder, Komal Ahmad, who spoke at the Event Waste and Food Donation Symposium in San Francisco:

Other Ways We Work to Support the Community and Environment by Diverting Waste

After a Boardwalk themed event we found ourselves with a lot of leftover cotton candy...the staff enjoyed some but no way to eat it all and instead of throwing it away, our Director of Business Development, Jeanavive Janssen reached out to a family shelter in the area.
Lucky for us (and our waistlines), Raphael House had a carnival themed event planned for the resident families and we were more than happy to donate our extra cotton candy. Getting to see the smiles on these kids faces while also helping our San Francisco community warmed our hearts!
Excess food after your event is one less thing to worry about with The Village Venue. Our team stays committed to making the Village a sustainable venue while giving back to our San Francisco community.

Want to do more to help with Climate Change?
Consider choosing the "Impossible Burger" from our awesome Catering menu selections...we have been serving this option since it became available to San Francisco Catering companies.
Our clients have done side by side tastings with other Burgers and have opted regularly to switch to the Impossible Burgers because it tastes great and it accommodates more of their attendees preferences. If that is not enough, look what making this choice can do for our Environment and Climate Change:

(Don't worry we do have bigger Impossible Burgers...this is our one bite mini. It is a favorite for both eating and taking pictures of by event attendees...)

Looking for more ways to Green your Event? Check out this BizBash Article and get tips from the San Francisco OracleWorld successes.
A few of our favorites from the list of 18 Tips:
- Use a mobile app instead of a printed program, and encourage exhibitors to eliminate or reduce their use of printed materials (this will avoid shipping fees to and from the venue as well).
- Reduce the amount of signage at the event, and recycle what you do create for future usage (or avoid signage and work with our onsite AV team Madrone Studios who can offer Gobo and Projection Audio Visual Solutions).
- Recognize hotels that have embraced green practices (Partners are key, that is why we maintain great San Francisco area hotel partners...)
- Create a system to track the sustainability initiatives and results so you can measure progress in coming years (would you like the results from your events food donation that we do on your behalf? It would be our pleasure to share the insight on who and how your food helped the local community...).
About The Village Venue 969 Market Street San Francisco California:
Fully customizable San Francisco event space for all your event needs; from User Conferences to Receptions.
The Village is a 17,000sf state-of-the-art rental space, featuring 3 floors of meeting space, over 1,000 person capacity, 1,000 mbps of internet and easy access for load-ins. This high-tech meeting space is designed specifically to help bring to life your event plans by providing integrated in-house catering and audio visual production services.
This ideally located San Francisco venue on Market Street is near Moscone Conference Center and walkable.
Download our PDF Brochure.
For more information Email Us today!
#FoodDonations #Sustainability #SustainableVenues #Green #GreenVenues #Donations #SF #SanFrancisco #SFEvents #SFParties #SFCatering #SanFranciscoCatering #Catering #TheVillage #969Market #969MarketStreet #MarketStreet #Copia #Doordash #Caviar #EventPlanners #EventProfs #CorporateEvents #SanFranciscoVenue #GreenEvents #ClimateChange