An Epic-Cure to Crisis Response
Executive Summary
April 16, 2020
Hanna Layton
The original intent of the project was to address the complex sustainability issue of
systematic food waste by creating an educational guide for creating a food-saving
organization and divert edible food from landfills. The guide was going to be based on a
nonprofit organization my family and I founded called Epic-Cure, that has activated
programs that serve to relieve community food insecurity, encourage community
connectedness, support environmental health, and empower youth with entrepreneurial
opportunities. However, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, the original scope
and plan of this project has shifted considerably. I decided to put the guide on hold so
that I could step into a space of agency via working in real time, to adapt my
organization so that we can continue to serve the community when we are most
needed. In order to sustain the wellbeing of our communities, the adaptation of a food
aid service in the time of the crisis is an imminent need. This project shift not only
serves to provide emergency relief, but also to identify gaps in the food distribution
system and the supply chains that NGOs like Epic-Cure rely on so that we might be
more resilient in the face of future shocks to the systems.
Due to the nature and needs of the crisis,I had to shift my approach on the project from
a consultant role to being an active team leader, working alongside the community and
all levels of our organization to address the current crisis. By working onsite at my
organization's facility, I have been able to address the unfolding barriers to our service,
to ensure that we can continue to aid the community through this tumultuous time. I
developed an interdisciplinary team consisting of healthcare professionals, law
enforcement, economists, and leaders from national food aid organizations. Our
approach was strengthened by the diversity of our team and the development of
partnerships with other food aid services, food manufactures and retailers, and federal
agencies like USDA. We have been able to satisfy growing demand while taking all
known precautions we can to ensure the health and wellbeing of our team and the
people we serve. I have worked to document changes we make to our distribution
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An Epic-Cure to Crisis Response

process as they happen, so that post-crisis, I will have the necessary data to record our
best practices and areas of improvement. This situation has taught my organization that
non-profit food distributors need to be adaptable, establish reliable pathways to quickly
increase distribution capacity in crisis situations, and not return to a “business-as-usual”
model post-crisis. Once I finish collecting and analyzing my data, I will be creating an
emergency preparedness guide of some sort should a similar situation come up in the
future.
Upon my preliminary analysis, I have found that our efforts to scale up quickly have
been successful. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, Epic-Cure was still in its early
development stages, slowly building its capacity to expand service in the community.
We had reached four distributions per week serving on average 400 families a week
with food and hygiene products we rescued from grocery outlets. Although we were
efficient, we could not have predicted the impact we would soon have. Since the crisis
was presented and seeing almost half of the food aid services in our country halting
their aid, we worked quickly to plan how we would accommodate for the increase of
need during a time in which our typical food supply chain would be greatly disrupted.
The actions we have taken to accommodate the growing need include partnering with
the USDA and Feeding America, working with food distributors including KeHe and
Sysco, renting a refrigerated truck and a box truck for extra storage and mobilization of
distributions, applying for grants for increased operating costs, and working with medical
professionals to ensure the health of our volunteers and clients. We have been able to
increase our distributions to eight distributions on average per week, now serving 1,200
families per week. This is not only a solution that provides timely community relief, but
also works to address the sustainability challenges onset by food waste.
I have approached this project not solely as an immediate relief service project, but as
an opportunity to observe the fragility of the globalized and capitalistic systems that the
U.S. is dependent on. It is an opportunity to see the systematic weaknesses that are
normally hidden or overlooked. For Epic-Cure, it is an opportunity to think not just about
the short-term sustainability of our community, but also about what we can develop so
that after when things begin to normalize we may reach a more resilient state.

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