Welcome to Tomato Rescue™ Company.
Founded in 2023, our purpose is to help mitigate the shocking level of waste in one segment of the food supply chain in the U.S.A. – the tomato farming industry.
Every year, in Florida alone, more than 800,000,000 pounds of edible tomatoes are left in the field to rot rather than feeding people and creating huge quantities of greenhouse gases. 41% of this waste occurs here in Manatee County, the home of Tomato Rescue.
- Scarred or blemished fruit is undesirable in the produce industry.
- Tomatoes ripen at different rates. The fruit that is too ripe will not withstand the journey from the farm to your table, so it is left behind.
- Farming isn’t like other forms of manufacturing. Tomatoes have a short shelf life and supply and demand are never perfectly balanced.
In the past, some have attempted to find outlets for this wasted fruit such as “Pin Hookers” who scavenge the fields for ripe fruit to sell at flea markets and small produce stands and USDA programs for schools, prisons and such without success, because they rely on the fruit remaining in a fresh state.
We at Tomato Rescue believe that the only viable solution is to process the fruit into a shelf stable food product. The first step is to wash, de-stem, puree the fruit, and then expose it to a thermal process that pasteurizes and preserves. This is all then packed into 2600 lb. bulk bins.
This preserved product is then used as needed to make tomato based food products. The first of these products is Yo Mama’s™ pasta sauce. Based in Clearwater, Florida, Yo Mama’s makes a complete line of sauces and condiments.
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Each jar of Yo Mama’s pasta sauce rescues roughly 6-7 tomatoes. In total we project using 4 million pounds of rescued tomato by 2024 in Yo Mama’s products.
Our long term goal is to use this unique partnership as a model than can be expanded to get closer to utilizing much more of the 800 million pounds that go to waste each year.
Thank you for visiting Tomato Rescue.
Further inquiries may be directed to:
Jonathan Greenlaw
Tomato Rescue™ Company
P.O. Box 155
Palmetto, Fl. 34220