Increasing access and visibility of local food has been a common thread in all of my projects for the past 10 years. I have experience in bookkeeping, human resources, marketing, grant writing, and community outreach, and am actively looking to offer my services to local food & farming organizations. My experience and skills are detailed via my LinkedIn page, with specific projects highlighted below . If you are interested in working together, please contact me directly at orchardeorto@gmail.com.
Thank you!
Women’s Lunch Place | Boston, MA
2021-2022
I’ve volunteered with Women’s Lunch Place for several years, and then had the joy of being an employee. As Wellness Navigator, I developed holistic programming for the women’s day shelter involving educational field trips, a smoking cessation group, yoga, meditation, and more.
My particular passion at the shelter was increasing access to and education about local, high quality food. I formed a partnership with Gaining Ground in Concord, MA, starting weekly produce deliveries of their beautiful organic vegetables to the shelter kitchen, which then created balanced meals for breakfast and lunch for the hundreds of women who passed through WLP’s doors every day. I also organized trips to the Copley Square Farmer’s Market around the corner, showing guests how to use their SNAP/HIP benefits and following it with a cooking demo and recipes using the ingredients we just saw. Through a Grassroots Grant with the City of Boston, I helped WLP receive funding to build a flower garden on the sparse piece of land in front of the shelter and church. Today it functions as an interactive garden for guests to enjoy fresh air and learn how to garden. Lastly, I secured a greenhouse plot in The Food Project’s Dudley Greenhouse in Roxbury for guests to learn how to grow vegetables and engage in meaningful activity.
Siena Farms | Sudbury, MA
2019-2021
For 3 years, I worked as Siena Farms’ Business Manager, handling the administrative duties involved with CSA operation, HR, marketing, grant writing, and more. Over the course of my time at the farm, the COVID-19 pandemic brought upon a huge increase in business and overall growth of operations.
With this increase in business, I helped the farm secure 3 additional greenhouses through the Food Security Infrastructure Grant Program with the state of MA. This allowed the farm to drastically increase their growing potential. I also stewarded the Community Sponsored Agriculture program, forming partnerships with the YMCA of Greater Boston and VietAid Organization to supply their guests with weekly produce deliveries. My passion for working with kids was fulfilled through the farm’s Kids’ Farm Share option, where I put curated vegetable boxes for children each week, accompanied by kid-friendly games and recipes.
I also worked with the farm’s partner restaurants, Oleana and Sofra, to develop a Community Supported Restaurants program. Similar to a CSA, you would purchase a subscription box from the restaurants and receive a weekly box of their curated classics. This business model was essential during the pandemic to provide reliable funds to the restaurants and maintain employment for workers, and was so successful that it continues today.
Seven Hills Pasta Co. | Melrose, MA
2019
I met Carol & Giulio through Slow Food, and worked with them on various projects from my previous job at Eataly to developing content for their website and social media channels. I got to play around with their delicious, artisanal dried pasta and create recipes and photos to help spread the word on their traditional Italian, American-inspired labor of love.
Slow Food | Boston, MA
2017 – 2021
I had my hands in several projects at Slow Food as Community Cultivator and then shortly as their Chair. One project involved Slow Food’s global World Disco Soup Day campaign to raise awareness on food waste. I organized a month-long article series featuring local voices in Boston’s food rescue scene. Below are some samples:
- Lauren Palumbo, COO of Lovin’ Spoonfuls
- Dana Siles, New England Coordinator of Rescuing Leftover Cuisine
- Jack Leng, Education & Outreach Coordinator of the Boston Area Gleaners
We joined forces with the Boston Public Market at their annual Agricultural Festival to showcase what it means for a city to work together to tackle this complex problem from all angles.
The Grateful Bread | Cambridge, MA
June 2018
As the manager of Eataly Boston‘s food donation program, I noticed a large amount of bread going to waste even after our daily donation pickups. I’d heard about converting leftover bread to beer through Tristram Stuart’s Toast Ale and decided, why not make our very own local, Boston version?
Over several weeks surplus bread was collected at Eataly, where our donation partner Lovin’ Spoonfuls then transported it to Cambridge Brewing Company, storing it until brewing time.
On brew date, members of all three community partners met at CBC at the crack of dawn to mash the hard, stale bread (with empty beer kegs, of course!) and begin the transformation.
Just a few weeks later, the bright, citrusy sour beer was ready, and everyone gathered at CBC to celebrate the release. The beer remained on tap at both CBC and Eataly Boston’s Terra for the remainder of the summer with all proceeds going to Lovin’ Spoonfuls to promote food waste awareness.
Media/Press
Check out the story behind the bread via our collaboration video!
The Grateful Bread is Here! – Lovin’ Spoonfuls
Press Release – Mass Brew Bros
Eataly USA Donation Program | Boston, NYC
2017 – 2018
I first took on managing store-wide food waste in Eataly’s Boston store, developing a comprehensive collection and tracking system for leftover, or soon-to-be-expired goods from restaurants, quick service stations, and retail departments. Goods that cannot be repurposed internally are donated to various community partners that visit Eataly for donation pickups 7 days of the week, then distributing goods to shelters and charities in the Greater Boston Area.
Donated goods range from fresh pasta, to cheeses and salumi, to bread, canned goods, and fruits and vegetables. On average, $15,000 in retail value every month is diverted from waste through food donations in the Boston store.
Upon success in launching the program in Boston, I traveled to Eataly’s corporate headquarters in NYC to scale-up the procedure in the city’s two locations, creating customized standard operating procedures and training staff in each store.
The scale-up of the donation program continued onto new Eataly USA stores in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Las Vegas, and is still expanding today.
The donation program is a part of Eataly’s larger sustainability initiatives in collaboration with Foodprint Group.
Orchard e Orto 