Remember Sharmila Rathinam?  Way back in 2024, Greet ran an article about Eat Happy Now, the nonprofit Sharmila founded, built on a deceptively simple idea: use an app, recruit volunteers, and move good food from places that have too much of it to people who need it. The goal is zero waste through logistics, done right. At the time, they had 250 volunteers rescuing about 140,000 pounds of food. Sounds impressive, right? Turns out she was just getting started. 

 

Eat Happy Now has now crossed one million pounds of food rescued. Again, for the awe and emphasis this deserves: One. Million. Pounds. In roughly three years, this effort has spared food from filling acres of landfill and prevented about 2.5 million pounds of CO2 emission from entering the atmosphere; all while nourishing thousands of people experiencing food scarcity in our region. A win-win-win. 

 

The volunteer army has grown from 250 to over 800 active runners, each downloading the EatHappyNow app, picking a delivery that fits their commute or their Saturday errands, and getting it done from the seat of their car. And this kind of back seat environmentalism is motivating the next generation of activists, as 127 of those 800+ volunteers are high schoolers. There are 11 active high school clubs powering daily food rescue operations. Eleven. These teenagers are out here running logistics for a food equity nonprofit before their AP exams. 

 

And they have grown beyond the grocery stores and bakeries of the early days. Eat Happy Now has expanded into the hospitality industry, picking up from hotel kitchens and restaurant catering operations where the sheer volume of surplus food is, frankly, staggering. Hospital cafes are now on the list. School cafeterias are next. Catering, which generates mountains of untouched food after every conference, wedding, and corporate lunch, is starting to become one of their fastest-growing rescue sectors. Think about the last event you attended where there were towers of sandwiches left at the end. Now we can call Eat Happy Now, filling bellies with those sandwiches across King County. 

 

What makes this more than just an impressive logistics operation is the specificity of what they are rescuing. Sharmila has always understood something that a lot of food banks miss: food insecurity does not mean people just need calories. It means they need food that actually speaks to them, reflecting their culture and cooking traditions. Food is a love language, a cultural celebration, and a family expression of tradition. Eat Happy Now's focus on diverse, culturally relevant food with the kinds of ingredients that can go untouched at conventional donation sites, is not a side note. It is the whole point. 

 

If you run a food business, a restaurant, a catering company, a hospital cafe, or a school cafeteria, and you have surplus food at the end of service, call them. The infrastructure is there. The volunteers are there. All they need is you. And if you want to get your hands (or rather, your car) in the game, download the app. It takes about the same amount of time as a Starbucks run, and the ROI is considerably better. One million pounds in three plus years. And Sharmila Rathinam, who once sat in silence for ten days waiting for her next chapter to reveal itself, is just getting cookin’. 

 

To donate food, volunteer, or learn more, visit their website: eathappynow.org