Taylor Moore knew by the time he was 18 that he wanted to make a life in Leelanau County.
“As I was maturing I realized that I don’t want to be in a city and I really want to put roots down,” he said. “I was really set on coming back here.”
Today, Moore is director of Food Rescue of Goodwill Northern Michigan, where he connects surplus food with the people that need it. The work brings together two of his passions — food and social welfare — while giving him a way to directly uplift the community he has long considered home.
He was born in Chicago and grew up from the age of 10 to 18 in London, spending summers in Leelanau with his grandma before returning to the States for college. Growing up among expats, many of whom moved every few years for work, helped him realize that he wanted something more permanent.
He studied sociology and political science, first at Tufts University and then Colorado College, focusing on social welfare programs. In 2015 he moved home to a Maple City house his parents had been trying to sell, and asked if he could give it a shot living there.
“Without that, I would be like so many other young people, not able to have a home here,” Moore said. “It was just really lucky timing on my part.”
Getting from a political science degree to a loading dock full of produce took a few detours. After his freshman year Moore was disillusioned with what he’d been studying.
“I actually wanted to have, like real skills,” he said.
He was also sick with Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune condition that affects the thyroid gland that had gone undiagnosed for years and made him really start to take into account what he ate.
“I had to learn that was I eat matters and so I was already finding this passion for food because it was so important to my life,” Moore said He enrolled in culinary school and worked in restaurants, including a short stint at Blu in Glen Arbor, but he struggled to picture a lifetime in the kitchen. Teaching cooking classes at Colorado Springs, through a national program called Cooking Matters, helped him find a new direction. He taught families with young kids and people with disabilities and he learned that people actually get paid to do that kind of work in a community.
When it was time to move back to Michigan, he applied to any Leelanau area nonprofit that would talk to him. One of those interviews was with Sakura Takano, now the CEO of Rotary Charities of Traverse City, for a case management job working with people experiencing homelessness.
“I kept talking about food rescue and food banking,” Moore said of the interview. “I mean I didn’t really have any experience as a social worker at that time, so I was talking about what I knew.”
They both knew that the job wasn’t for him but Sakura made a phone call anyway and a couple weeks later Moore received a call from Food Rescue offering him a position.
Now the director of the program, Moore said, “our mission is to increase access to healthy food and reduce food waste in our region.”
Food Rescue is a part of Goodwill Northern Michigan, a Traverse City based nonprofit that covers 19 counties. They pick up surplus from grocery stores, farms and bakeries and deliver it to food pantries and meal sites at no cost. Food Rescue moves close to 12,000 pounds of food a day and out of that, usually on 3% is unusable and will go towards compost or animal feed. Every Monday more than 2,000 pounds is sent to 5 Loaves 2 Fish in Leland alone.
Over the last few years, the program has changed what is on pantry shelves.
“In our region, when I started at Food Rescue only 14% of food pantries always had fresh produce available, and now this year we got up to 100%,” he said.
He credits a wide network for that, including farmers, grocery store employees and faith based groups that don’t always see eye to eye.
“A lot of other organizations are choosing to collaborate over competing with each other,” he said.
Still, he is clear that the problem is far from solved.
“Food insecurity is worse now than it was when I moved here,” he said. “Hunger and food insecurity is, first and foremost, a policy choice.”
However, Moore, who identifies as a Democratic Socialist, said his politics don’t get in the way of his work that has to serve everyone. As a member of the Cleveland Township Planning Commission, he said, “it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re a Republican or a Democrat or what political ideology you are. You need to listen to what your neighbors are saying.”
Outside of work, Moore serves on the Leelanau Conservancy’s farmland protection committee and volunteers with LIFT, helping students at Glen Lake School with homework and art projects. He can also be found hiking around the peninsula, biking at Palmer Woods and curling at Broomstacks. He and his partner Tori, a fifth grade teacher, are also expecting their first children in the form of twins due in January.
Ultimately, Moore sees Leelanau County, with its wealth of financial resources and political connections, as having a responsibility to do more.
“We should be really leading,” he said, “in making sure that no child here or in the region is struggling to get the food that they need.”
