Meal delivery service dumps $17,000 worth of food lost during power outage
By Aaron Hegarty
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OMAHA, Nebraska (KETV) — Mealbox Omaha says it delivers around 1,500 to 2,000 scratch meals across the metro area each week.
But nothing is being delivered from the small kitchen in Benson this week.
The business says it lost around $17,000 worth of food after Wednesday’s storm knocked out power for days. Power returned Monday, but it was far too late.
The food sits rotting outside the kitchen, while other food inside still needs to be tossed.
“I don’t want to waste food,” said the cook, Will Birge. “I don’t want to throw it in the garbage. It’s heartbreaking. There’s so many starving people out there.”
He said it’s usually a zero-waste kitchen. The company takes meal orders and places them accordingly. He said tossing it all was hard for his passionate staff to stomach.
“I probably could’ve been ready with a generator or something like that,” Birge said. “But I never in my wildest dreams thought I would need one. So, lesson learned.”
His business partner and wife, Rachel Birge, hope insurance will cover most of the loss, but say it’s a hit to the company regardless.
They said it’ll be a lot of work to catch up for the company that opened in 2018. The storage included fermented and seasonal foods that take time to make and obtain.
Rachel said customers are helping out by purchasing gift cards.
“There’s no other option. We have to be OK,” Will said. “This is our family business and it’s our passion and we love doing it and we’re going to have to figure out how to make it work regardless.”
He hopes Omaha Public Power District considers burying power lines to make the system more resilient to storms.
“Maybe it’s time to really figure out, is there a better way to do this? We live in Bennington. It’s all underground. We lost power for 15 minutes,” he said. “There’s got to be a better way.”
OPPD said on Monday that they’re looking into burying the lines, but it’s likely not feasible to bury everything not already underground.
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