photo by: Dominick Williams. Courtesy of Chetan Michie

Chetan Michie, Just Food's production and sourcing manager, prepares a pan of vegetables at the Chop Shop.

In Chetan Michie’s career in Lawrence’s restaurant industry, change has been a constant.

Michie, who has lived in Lawrence for 20 years, has been a bartender, a dishwasher, an executive chef — and at all kinds of restaurants, from upscale dining establishments to Latchkey Deli, which he helped open in 2020.

But when it became clear that the deli didn’t need a full-time chef, Michie started thinking about what was next. He soon found the answer. While scrolling through his phone eating a sandwich, he saw a job listing for the local nonprofit Just Food for a sourcing and production manager — a person who could creatively find ways to prevent food waste.

That’s how Michie went from changing jobs to working in a job that changes every single day. He now oversees Just Food’s Chop Shop program, which produces ready-to-eat meals using food that might otherwise be thrown away. There are no recipes, the ingredients are often a surprise, and improvisation and creativity are the name of the game.

“I feel like I’ve assumed my ultimate form,” Michie said. “It’s a nice blend of the cumulative skill set from my career and my passion for food justice and fighting food insecurity.”

photo by: Dominick Williams. Courtesy of Chetan Michie

At the Just Food Chop Shop, produce that would otherwise go to waste is turned into nutritious, ready-to-eat meals like this grain and mixed veggie salad.

Michie had volunteered extensively at Just Food during the worst parts of the COVID-19 pandemic and knew most of the crew. Once he started, he got to work right away in finding ways to ensure that food donated to the food pantry would not get tossed or end up as “hog feed.” His background as a chef fit in perfectly with his prior volunteer work, and soon the Chop Shop was turning thousands of pounds of food into thousands of meals.

In the United States, 92 billion pounds of food are wasted each year, according to statistics from Feeding America, a nonprofit working to fight hunger. While that includes milk that curdles in your fridge or leftovers that get tossed out because they get moldy, a large part of the food wasted in the United States is still perfectly good to eat.

The statistics from Feeding America say that 51.7% of the waste comes from the food industry. Oddly shaped fruits and vegetables, food with upcoming sell-by or expiration dates that may still be fresh, overproduction at farms or food being damaged during transport can all be reasons why food is wasted before it even gets to your plate.

photo by: Dominick Williams. Courtesy of Chetan Michie

Raw vegetables at the Chop Shop wait to be turned into ready-to-eat meals. Much of the food that’s wasted in the U.S. is produce that may have some cosmetic imperfections but is perfectly good to eat.

photo by: Dominick Williams. Courtesy of Chetan Michie

Donated bread sits in baskets at the Chop Shop.

Not surprisingly, all this waste is very costly — the dollar value of the food wasted in the U.S. each year is $473 billion. A U.N. report found that 1.05 billion tons of food were wasted worldwide in 2022, which contributed to 8% to 10% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.

Michie’s program is one way that Just Food is hoping to mitigate this big problem on the local level.

When he started in 2022, the Chop Shop did not have a permanent location, so he would go to whatever commissary kitchen he could find. That meant temporarily working out at the Douglas County Fairgrounds in between 4-H classes and also a summer stint at the kitchen at Eudora High School, Michie said. During those “cowboy days,” as Michie called them, the Chop Shop was still able to save over 15,550 pounds of food from going to waste, turning them into around 19,000 pounds of newly prepared food. If a meal is averaged out to about eight ounces, Michie said, then that’s nearly 38,000 meals prepared in the first year.

Eventually, Michie was able to find a permanent home for the Chop Shop in August 2022 at 805 Vermont St. after Terrebonne moved to its new Massachusetts Street location. Michie works preparing meals at the location, which is shared with JB’s Cali Fusion, on Monday through Wednesday every week; Thursday and Friday are spent getting the food for the next week of meals.

photo by: Dominick Williams. Courtesy of Chetan Michie

The Just Food Chop Shop is pictured on Vermont Street.

Michie said the name “Chop Shop” is inspired by the cooking competition “Chopped,” where competitors are given a random basket of ingredients and asked to prepare a meal with all of them. Michie felt that fit because he doesn’t know quite what he’s going to get each day.

“I could get four cases of bell peppers one day and have 300 pounds of butternut squash the next,” Michie said.

That means the Chop Shop can’t operate with a fixed set of recipes. Instead, the focus is on making something creative and nutritious out of whatever the food bank happens to receive.

“I’m rarely in a situation where I will have every single ingredient for a specific recipe. I really have to do a lot of improvisation, substitutions, stuff like that.” Michie said.

Since the Chop Shop moved into its new digs, Michie said the ability to make those meals has doubled. From January through October of 2024, Michie said the Chop Shop has turned about 22,500 pounds of food into 35,000 pounds of meals. Michie also said the group has partnered with catering companies around Lawrence to help repackage their food as well. That initiative by itself has helped repurpose 15,000 pounds of food.

The Chop Shop doesn’t just help by saving food from going to waste. Michie said it’s also part of the larger work of Just Food to help de-stigmatize food insecurity. The main food pantry was renovated and reopened in March 2021, as the Journal-World reported, in a layout designed like a grocery store with the goal of creating a better experience for people using the food bank.

Michie said the feedback Just Food got about the meals prepared by Chop Shop has been huge. For people who struggle to cook, such as the elderly or people with disabilities, or those who just don’t have time to cook, like people working multiple jobs to try to provide for their family, those prepared meals are a tremendous help.

They’re much more nutritious than other types of quick, pre-made meals like frozen pizzas or TV dinners. If Michie receives 900 pounds of butternut squash, as a longtime cook, he knows how to prepare it into a tasty meal, something that not everyone has the time or access to do, and he said that gives people a more nutrient-dense option.

photo by: Dominick Williams. Courtesy of Chetan Michie

Containers of ready-to-eat food from Just Food’s Chop Shop in the fridge.

This work is coming at a time when Michie said Just Food is feeding “exponentially more people” than ever while receiving fewer donations of both food and money.

“The need has never really been greater,” Michie said. “Every last ounce of food counts.”

And he’ll continue to make every bit that the Chop Shop receives go as far as it can. He’s happy to be doing something that combines his passions of food justice and culinary work, and he wishes that every community had a program like the Chop Shop.

“I’m very proud and grateful I can provide this service to the community,” Michie said.

photo by: Dominick Williams. Courtesy of Chetan Michie

Chetan Michie, Just Food’s production and sourcing manager, with a box of prepared meals at the Chop Shop.