Timberwolves, Lynx give back to community by donating stadium food

It takes a lot of food to serve a crowd at Target Center for a Timberwolves or Lynx game.

The stadium chefs prepare a lot, but whatever is not sold is not wasted because a new program is giving back to the community.

After a nearly sold-out Wolves game at Target Center, senior executive chef Jason Steidle packages up whatever is leftover of the freshly made food for the night.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” Steidle said.

“The amount of food that was getting discarded was just heartbreaking,” executive chef David Fhima said.

Fhima is instrumental in this new program. And it’s important to him that his top-tier food is gifted to those who need it most.

“The food that is being prepared and served and then distributed to the communities is exactly the same food that the people sitting courtside are paying a lot of money for,” Fhima said.

The morning after a game, they deliver the packaged meals to Youthlink, also in downtown Minneapolis, which serves over 100,000 people a year.

“It’s helping the most vulnerable young adults in the Twin Cities that are coming here for refuge, that are coming here for safety,” Youthlink CEO Rich Melzer said.

Melzer says this partnership saves them money and resources, but most importantly creates a bond.

“We’re nourishing them with high-quality food that they might not get elsewhere,” Melzer said. “And that support I think tells young people that we love them.”

“I think it’s awesome, I think it’s great that a team like this can give back to our community,” one fan said.

Every home game, they average about 175 pounds of food in donations. Since this program started last season, they’ve donated a total of seven tons of food.

Fans we talked with said the work behind the scenes is a slam dunk.  

“I’m very happy to hear this,” another fan said. “I think this is what we do in Minnesota in terms of helping our neighbors.”