Follow the food: How MoCo leftovers get rescued, redistributed to those in need
As Montgomery County’s food insecurity rate climbs, DC Food Rescue is helping turn restaurant surplus into fresh meals
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Jacqueline KalilAugust 12, 2026 10:19 a.m.
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It’s 8:30 a.m. on a recent weekday at Dig Inn on Elm Street and the dining room remains dark. The popular regional fast-casual restaurant will not open for another three hours, but Chef Operator Angela Heidenthal is already preparing the day’s first order—not for a paying customer, but for a volunteer.
Near the kitchen entrance sit two large takeout bags filled with grilled chicken, charred broccoli, rice and seasonal vegetable dishes prepared the day before. The food is still fresh, but it was never sold. Within the hour, it will leave the restaurant as meals for families experiencing food insecurity just a few miles away.
“We do donations every day,” Heidenthal told Bethesda Today as she worked. “At the end of our evening shift, we clear out the market of the items that are left over, package everything up, and our morning chef pulls it from the refrigerator so DC Food Rescue can pick it up.”
Founded in 2016 by Kate Urbank, DC Food Rescue is a DC-based nonprofit focused on reducing food waste and combatting hunger by connecting surplus food with people in need throughout the DMV. The organization uses an app to connect volunteers with donation pickup locations, such as restaurants and grocery stores, and shelters and nonprofits that receive the donations.
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“Given that this is the nation’s capital, one would like to think that we do not let residents go hungry,” Urbank said. “It is particularly important that there be a very stable, sound, growing food rescue program in D.C. as well as Northern Virginia and parts of Montgomery County.”
The partnership between Dig Inn and DC Food Rescue began about three years ago, when the restaurant opened its Georgetown location and reached out to Urbank with an offer.
“They approached us, as I recall, and said, ‘We will have surplus food. We care about sustainability. Our food is healthy, and it pains us to throw it out,’” Urbank said.
The partnership expanded as Dig Inn opened additional locations throughout the DMV. The Bethesda location, which opened about three years ago, continues to provide regular donations.
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For Heidenthal, the volunteers who arrive for pickups have become familiar faces.
“There is one gentleman who always arrives on a bicycle. He came here on his bike in a torrential downpour, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, here’s some napkins. You want a drink?’ And he’s like, ‘I gotta go. I gotta get these donated.” ’ she recalled with a laugh. “Then he takes the bags, gets on his bike and leaves.”
A few minutes later, volunteer Jennifer Helfand enters through a side door. The Bethesda resident began volunteering with DC Food Rescue about six months ago and quickly saw the impact of redirecting food that might otherwise go unused.
“Everyone needs to eat,” Helfand said. “We live in a country where there’s a lot of food, so let’s get it to the people who need it.”
She first completed pickups in Washington, D.C., before taking on routes closer to home when additional donation opportunities became available in Montgomery County. For Helfand, serving her community made the work even more meaningful.
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“It’s important to be doing it here,” she said. “It’s a very wealthy county, and we should be able to help the people in need. It should be a very simple step to take the extra food from these amazing restaurants and cafés that we have throughout Bethesda and feed the people that really need it.”
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The effort unfolds in one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, where the median household income exceeds $130,000, according to the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Yet beneath the prosperity lies a growing need.
About 35% of Montgomery County residents experience food insecurity or lack consistent access to fresh, healthy food, according to the Capital Area Food Bank’s 2025 Hunger Report. The Montgomery County Food Council reports the county’s food insecurity rate increased from 27% in 2023 to 35% in 2025 as wages struggled to keep pace with the region’s rising cost of living.
Just a few miles away from Digg Inn sits the National Center for Children and Families (NCCF), a private nonprofit in Bethesda that provides housing and specialized services for vulnerable youth and families experiencing homelessness.
Helfand pulls up near the organization’s kitchen, where staff members are waiting to receive the donations.
Inside the campus cafeteria, the Dig Inn meals become part of the day’s menu for residents across NCCF’s programs. The food is placed alongside other meal options, allowing residents to choose what they want to eat.
“Food insecurity affects not only the body but also the mind,” said Abigail Jackson, senior care coordinator at NCCF’s residence program. “When food rescues donate, they give our clients more options, and those options allow for autonomy, for agency. They’re able to choose and make choices.”
For residents who may have dietary restrictions, allergies or simply different preferences, those choices can make a significant difference.
“When there is food insecurity, it can sometimes lead to irregular eating patterns or skipped meals if there aren’t a lot of great choices,” Jackson said. “Dig provides a lot of those choices, those healthy options. People can go, they can choose what they do want to eat, what they don’t want to eat, and that can lead to more regular meals.”
Erika Sheehan, an occupational therapist with NCCF’s youth program, works with unaccompanied at-risk youths living on campus on independent living skills, including cooking, meal planning and grocery shopping.
“We have created an initiative around options and accessibility to healthier options, Dig Inn being one of them,” Sheehan said. “That opportunity for cafeteria food and comfort food, but also exposure to different foods, has translated into exposure to cooking and meal prepping and planning.”
Sheehan and Jackson work primarily with boys aged 13 to 20 living on campus, helping them develop skills they can carry into adulthood.
“Healthy eating, making those choices, cooking for yourself—those are all life skills,” Jackson said.
The lessons are not always immediate. Some residents arrive with strong food preferences or limited exposure to certain ingredients, but staff members say repeated opportunities can gradually change those habits.
“Exposure is so important, and just having those foods available is so important,” Jackson said. “When we’re exposed to other kinds of foods and we try new things, we can realize, ‘Oh, I actually really like that.’”
Sheehan said the process is also about finding creative ways to make healthier foods approachable.
“Some youth have sensory sensitivities,” she said. “So exposing different ways to cook foods or different ways to add vegetables … I think exposing them to different ways of how to eat and prepare meals is important.”
For NCCF staff, the impact of food rescues extends beyond the immediate donation. The meals provide nourishment while also helping residents build independence and confidence.
“Having the autonomy of choosing healthy meals or choosing different options—even if they aren’t healthy, everyone gets a choice,” Sheehan said. “Having that autonomy of picking something in a place where they don’t necessarily feel like they have the most autonomy during everything that they do, I think that’s a great piece.”
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The organization behind the morning rescue began with a simple idea: use technology to make volunteering easier and redirect food that would otherwise be wasted.
DC Food Rescue was founded a decade ago by Urbank after she moved back to Washington, D.C., from Fairfield County, Connecticut. While living in Connecticut, Urbank volunteered with a food rescue program that used an app to allow volunteers to schedule pickups when it was convenient for them.
“I thought, how perfect is this?” Urbank said.
When she returned to Washington, she began looking for a similar opportunity. After realizing there was no comparable app-based food rescue network in the region, she decided to create one.
“There wasn’t something just like what I was used to,” Urbank said. “The technology was what was the glue that kind of made a program come to life pretty quickly.”
For about six months, Urbank worked on developing the app, recruiting volunteers and connecting restaurants with community organizations.
“It was just me in an app and trying to figure out, now what do I do?” she said.
Since its founding, DC Food Rescue has helped redirect roughly 15 million pounds of food across the DMV.
That can include restaurant meals, grocery store donations, prepared foods, pastries and even small deliveries.
“In a city like D.C., we do bike rescues. We will pick up three pizzas and a bag of pastries,” Urbank said. “We like to make it so that the program has something for everyone.”
For Urbank, the mission connects two issues: hunger and waste.
“People kind of come to it with concerns about hunger,” she said. “But I have a whole bunch of people who’ve also come to me very concerned about waste.”
For every rescue to succeed, Urbank said three pieces must come together: volunteers, food donors and organizations able to receive the donations.
“You need volunteers, you need places to donate food, and you need places that will take food,” she said.
As the food is served at NCCF, the chain is complete: restaurant to volunteer to someone’s belly. It’s a sequence that will begin again tomorrow morning… and, Urbank hopes, for at least another 10 years.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine