CHARITY starts at home, they say.
During this year's spring racing carnival it will start at first light after each race day, when SecondBite's refrigerated van arrives at Flemington.
Long after corporate revellers have downed champagne and vacated marquees, SecondBite will collect the leftover food and distribute it to charities across the city.
It's no mean feat. Second-Bite's executive director Katy Barfield estimates that 4 tonnes of food - "all raw ingredients, certainly no leftover canapes" - will be taken from the racetrack during this year's Melbourne Cup carnival.
That's enough to provide 8000 individual meals.
Providers include the Victoria Racing Club plus the two caterers to the big end of town - Epicure, an upmarket subsidiary of listed Spotless Catering, and Peter Rowland - which dominate the marquee scene at Flemington.
Epicure has the contract to cater to the exclusive Emirates marquee in the Birdcage, as well as Westpac.
Food not eaten during the races will become lunch at some of Melbourne's missions the next day. "I've heard that some charities have gone from serving cows' cheeks to fresh prawns since SecondBite stepped in," says chairman Ian Carson.
Epicure executive manager Michael Milburn is more than happy to see his leftovers go to a good home.
"The work of SecondBite should be commended at every level. From a purely environmental level it helps us to reduce wastage. It provides charities with some much-needed nutritional food, and it adds a generosity of spirit that can be so lacking in society."
When Milburn's chefs look at the ingredients they see the best Tasmanian salmon and free-range eggs. Barfield just sees "good protein" for thousands of struggling families.
"At these top-end events the caterers tend to over-order, because they don't want to run out of anything. That means there is plenty of wastage, a lot of which would just end up as landfill. The Melbourne wholesale markets throw out 3000 tonnes of food each year, most of which goes into landfill and creates methane gas."
SecondBite has picked up some powerful corporate backers along the way, including Vodafone Australia, Mercedes-Benz, Foster's Group, Gadens Lawyers and AXA.
It has even broken down a few corporate barriers.
Chairman Ian Carson is from accounting and insolvency firm PPB. Also on the board is rival James Stewart of Ferrier Hodgson.
The SecondBite board also includes David Hisco, who this month was appointed group managing director of commercial banking at ANZ. Hisco was a member of the internal investigative team that looked into the Opes Prime fiasco at the bank. He meets regularly with John Simpson, general manager of corporate affairs at National Australia Bank.
"I love the fact that we have two rival banking executives on our board," Barfield says. "It just shows how a worthy cause can bring all types of people together."
It also means that, this year, an ANZ banker and a NAB banker will be serving up Westpac's leftovers to charity.
All directors will have learned a thing or two about how hard life is for families at the margins. "The financial situation seems to have hit
the news in the past month," Barfield says. Continued…
