What were 48,000 pie crusts doing in the alley behind a Minneapolis church?

Shortly before New Year's Day, 19 pallets of pie crusts appeared next to the alley behind Church of the Incarnation in south Minneapolis, like modern-day manna from heaven.

Within days, word hit social media. By Tuesday afternoon, a steady stream of gleaners approached the al fresco refrigerator, hoping to prevent the about-to-expire crusts from going to waste.

A woman crammed about 10 cases, each containing 12 boxes of Pillsbury pie crusts, into her aging SUV and remarked how the middle class wasn't what it used to be. While the heirs whose name was on the boxes were rolling in dough, she said, she'd deliver her take to several dozen food-insecure friends.

A guy pulled up in a Jeep and grabbed a few pie crusts for his chest freezer. A woman said her case was going to a kids' after-school program. A few others planned to redistribute hundreds of crusts through food giveaways around the city.

The unexpected donation of some 24,000 two-packs of pie crusts was too big for the church's food shelf to store, but, fortunately, cooperative weather kept temps below 40 degrees. The post-holiday pie-crust glut wasn't a miracle or a mistake. It was a rare-but-inevitable hiccup in the herculean process of getting surplus perishable food from local grocery distributors to Minnesotans in need.

In 2021, the Catholic parish of some 2,500 households, expanded its basement food shelf in a converted garage, after COVID revealed the area's substantial food insecurity. But while many food shelves purchase bulk quantities of staple items, Incarnation's Harvest from the Heart operates almost entirely on a food "rescue" model. That means it accepts food that grocery stores can't sell — such as imperfect produce or packaged food with looming "sell by" dates — that would otherwise be trashed. And it doesn't turn down donations.

The challenge with the massive pie crust donation was less an issue of its volume, said staffer Chris Pangle, than scant demand for a non-staple item. For the food shelf's mostly Spanish-speaking clientele, the pie crusts were "not highly sought after," Pangle said, though the food shelf's clients had taken two pallets' worth. (Pangle, himself, prefers to roll his own dough.)

Recently, Harvest from the Heart had no trouble offloading two entire truckloads of strawberries. "It all went in the same day," Pangle said.

The food rescue rarely gets a heads up about what a distributor is going to donate. When the crusts arrived, Pangle was driving the forklift, and his helper, who was inside the truck, told him he could see five pallets. "I was like, 'OK, five isn't bad. And then after we got those off, he's like, 'I see five more.' "

He was relatively unfazed by the loaves-and-fishes-grade bounty, which might feed 10 times Jesus' crowd of 5,000. "It happens once a year," he said with a shrug. In 2022, it was hand sanitizer. This year, it's pie crust.

Volatility of retail sales around the holidays combined with the end-of-the-year rush can upset the food-rescue process.

"Generally, it's a super-efficient model," said Lindsey Ochmanek, director of sourcing and demand planning for Second Harvest Heartland, the Twin Cities food bank that's a national leader in food rescue. "The ability to get that food out there as quickly as possible is really effective in keeping it out of landfills."

Also, since food rescued from wholesalers and retailers tends to be fresh and nutritious, food shelves find it a valuable supplement to their canned and dry good staples, Ochmanek said.

On Monday, Pangle's wife mentioned she'd seen a neighbor post about the crusts on Buy Nothing. By the time he arrived at the church Tuesday morning, six more pallets of pie crusts were gone.

While he was relieved to know the crusts were finding homes, he was concerned about the risks associated with the news circulating online.

Harvest from the Heart generally eschews attention, for fear of becoming a target of anti-immigrant sentiment, Pangle said. In addition, the food rescue assists nearly 250 families a day and can't accommodate more.

"The feel-goodery of posting it, to let people know, can become a huge detriment, because we only have a staff of two people who have to deal with all this," he said, pointing toward coolers and shelves stuffed with milk, cereal, corn chips and produce.

Last year, Harvest from the Heart kept 1.6 million pounds of rescued food from the trash. And that's not including food that wouldn't fit in the building, such as the pie crusts. Conservatively, it distributed about 5 million dollars' worth of food, Pangle said.

It was Pangle's day off, but because of the unpredictable nature of food rescue, he'd come into work. As he headed home, people continued to come down the alley to pull boxes from the quickly dwindling stacks.

Eric Berg of south Minneapolis was toting off a case of crusts for his wife, who learned of the surplus on Facebook. She planned to share the crusts with two nearby sisters. Perhaps the family will extend its holiday celebrations with a gathering to enjoy whatever the sisters bake, Berg said. "They're all Irish, so I'm sure there'll be some shepherd's pie."

Meanwhile, Dee Erickson was grabbing a case to replenish the tub of free food stocked by her Tangletown neighbor. "She says it's emptied every night."