by Beth Keating
News/Analysis
DisneyBizJournal.com
March 18, 2020
With Walt Disney World closing due to the coronavirus, Disney has turned to donating unused food to Second Harvest Food Bank.
In an average year, Disney World in Florida serves up more than 1.2 million pounds of turkey legs; 3.3 million Mickey Shaped Premium Bars; ten million hamburgers; a million pounds of watermelon; 324,000 pounds of popcorn (with and without the souvenir buckets); and 89 different varieties of cheese. Over at California Grill, 70 pounds of tomatoes show up on diner’s plates nightly, while the “cousins” at 50’s Prime Time Café at Hollywood Studios dish up 190 orders of meatloaf and mashed potatoes each day. At the nearby Hollywood Brown Derby, 63,000 Cobb Salads a year make their way to guests’ tummies.
Think of the last character buffet you attended (loving you, Tusker House!), or the ice-filled displays full of delicious looking seafoods (thinking of you, Cape May Buffet!), and the yummy dessert offerings (oh, where are you when I need you, Les Halles?) And that’s just the regular stops. Throw in the Food and Wine Festival in the fall, or the recently interrupted Flower and Garden Festival with all of its creative booths, and you have A LOT of food circulating through Lake Buena Vista and its environs.
In fact, Walt Disney World Resort would rank 45th among the world’s largest restaurant chains if it were an independent food service company. There are more than 475 places to dine across Disney World. If you include food carts, more than 6,000 different food items are available. The Land Pavilion alone provides more than 30 tons of fruits and vegetables yearly, grown right at Epcot (make sure you take the boat ride through the greenhouses sometime and see the plants and fishies in action).
With the rapid close of the Disney Parks – from bustling park full of hungry guests to ghost-town sidewalks in less than a week – what will become of all that extra food that is now sitting forlornly on shelves, with no guests in sight?
Disney has reached out to Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida, whom they have worked with since 1991, to donate the remaining food inventory to Central Floridians who will be in need during the coronavirus outbreak. With schools also closed during this crisis, school children will be especially vulnerable to missing meals, and Second Harvest will step in to help fill the void. More than 40 Orlando area nonprofits receive over 823,000 pounds of prepared, unserved food and veggies through Disney Harvest.
In a letter to cast members, Josh D’Amaro (Walt Disney World Resort President) said the Disney Harvest program “collects and distributes enough food each year to provide one million meals to people in need.” Disneyland in California is also sharing the bounty, sending their excess foods, including fruit, vegetables, packaged goods and banquet meals, to Second Harvest Food Bank in Orange County. Disneyland donated more than 20,000 meals to Second Harvest last year. In addition, Disney VoluntEARS also donate their time to helping out at Second Harvest locations. Second Harvest has also been the beneficiary of the runDisney Wine and Dine Half Marathon. What a blessing to come out of the Parks’ closings! Kudos to Disney, not only for a creative solution to their excess and unserved foods, but for lending a hand to their fellow Floridians.
As for me, with the extra downtime at home, I’m going over to the Disney Food Blog and scrolling through their Disney recipes section while I’m waiting. Maybe I’ll pull together the Tonga Toast for dinner tonight…
The above food fun facts are taken from Walt Disney World News. https://wdwnews.com/releases/walt-disney-world-resort-dining-fun-facts/
Want to make your own Tonga Toast? Here’s the link to Disney Food Blog’s recipe (they are not affiliated with Disney World, but are a great website that will help you fill your Disney needs while you are waiting for the parks to reopen!) https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2012/08/08/disney-recipe-tonga-toast-from-kona-cafe-in-disney-world/
Beth Keating is a regular contributor to DisneyBizJournal.
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