The Central Okanagan Food Bank is launching a $5.5 million capital campaign to transform an 11,000-square-foot warehouse in Kelowna into a ‘Food Rescue Transformation Centre’ aimed at reducing both food waste and food insecurity.
“Our feasibility studies are showing that there are two million pounds out there right now that’s going into the land, falling off trees,” said Trevor Moss, executive director of the Central Okanagan Food Bank (COFB).
The initiative comes as food banks report rising demand across the region, while millions of pounds of nutritious food continue to go unused each year due to oversupply, grading standards and cosmetic imperfections that make produce difficult to sell.
“That sucks,” said Kevin Day, owner of Day’s Century Growers in Kelowna, about food being wasted.
While Day’s Century Growers already donates its surplus to the food bank, the new initiative will make it easier for more farmers to do the same.
“The food bank is getting more organized to deal with some of this food waste that happens,” Day said. “It can only end up being that a lot of food is being saved.”
The Food Rescue Transformation Centre will increase cold storage capacity and improve its ability to handle larger volumes of donated food.
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“Just last week someone … offered us 20 pallets of mushrooms. We could only take, say, eight at that time,” Moss said. “This new refrigeration freezer space, we can say yes to all of that.”
The warehouse will also function as a food transformation hub, dehydrating and flash-freezing surplus food to preserve items before they spoil.
“We can take that product that’s right on the edge and we can elongate the life of it from actually two weeks; now it’s actually good for up to one year to two years,” Moss said.
It’s hoped the new refrigeration system will be in place by fall 2026.
The food transformation component is scheduled to be added in the spring of 2027.
“I’m not going to lie, like for us as a team, we’ve lost some sleep over this,” Moss said. “This is a bold initiative for us. We need the community. We have not secured any government funding for this, but we felt now is the time to do this and we’re just hoping people will come along.”
You can go to the Central Okanagan Food Bank website for more information or to donate.
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