Every Morning at 6 AM, the Comox Valley Shows Up.

Before most of us have poured our first coffee, Derek is already on the road.

The Comox Valley Food Bank’s food rescue truck rolls out of Courtenay at 6 AM every single day, making the rounds at grocery stores, food distributors, and local producers across the region. By the time Derek wraps up around 2 PM, the truck has collected thousands of pounds of fresh produce, dairy, bakery items, proteins, and shelf-stable food that would otherwise have nowhere to go.

It’s a quiet, daily act of community, and most people don’t know it’s happening. Check out our ride along video below!

Food rescue is exactly what it sounds like: intercepting good, usable food before it reaches the landfill.

Grocery stores and food distributors deal with an unavoidable reality — products get pulled from shelves before they’re past their best before dates, orders come in larger than expected, and perfectly edible food ends up in the back of a warehouse with nowhere to go. Without a system to catch it, that food is lost.

That’s where the truck comes in.

Every day, our food rescue program coordinates with partners like Save-On Foods and Thrifty Foods — along with local producers and distributors across the valley — to collect that surplus before it’s wasted. The food is brought back to the Food Bank, sorted, and made available to the more than 200 families we serve every day.

The result: over 90,000 pounds of food rescued every single month.

To put that in perspective, that’s less than 1% of the rescued food ending up in a landfill. The rest goes directly to your neighbours.

The route changes slightly depending on the day, but the rhythm is the same.

Derek leaves early — before the valley wakes up — and works through a set of stops with the kind of consistency that comes from knowing your community and caring about the work. Grocery store back doors. Distribution warehouses. Farms and local producers who set aside what they can’t move. Each stop is a handshake, a conversation, a relationship built over time.

The food that comes back isn’t a grab bag of scraps. It’s fresh bread, in-date produce, meat and dairy, canned goods. Items that stock a pantry. Items that make a real meal.

On Wednesdays, the truck does double duty. In addition to food rescue stops, it runs home deliveries for clients who aren’t able to make it to the Food Bank in person. Mobility challenges, health issues, transportation barriers. Whatever the reason, the truck brings food directly to the door. Because access to good food shouldn’t depend on whether you can get across town.

The first is environmental. Food waste is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. When organic matter breaks down in a landfill, it produces methane. At 90,000 pounds rescued every month, the truck is doing meaningful environmental work, quietly, every day.

The second is human. Every pound rescued is food that didn’t have to be purchased — which means better quality items on our shelves, more people served, and a community that takes care of what it has and the people who live here.

None of it happens without the Comox Valley saying yes. The grocery stores that set food aside. The distributors who coordinate pickups. The local producers who donate what they’ve grown.

If your business produces, distributes, or sells food and you’re interested in joining the rescue network, we’d love to hear from you.

The Comox Valley Food Bank has been serving this community since 1983. The food rescue truck is one part of that story, but it’s a part we’re especially proud of.