To run the North York Harvest Food Bank, Ryan Noble, Com’01, treats his non-profit like a startup and says his approach is influenced by his time at Queen’s University.
“We’ve borrowed lessons from the business world to create a better model for social good,” says Noble, who's been running the food bank since 2015. “We’ve spent the last decade thinking like a startup, running like a logistics company, and using corporate-level systems to drive social impact at scale.”
Rather than relying solely on donations, his food bank’s model turns its trucks and warehouses into “productive assets.” That’s because while Noble says charity is a beautiful, necessary thing, it isn’t enough to solve the economic issue that drives food-bank demand.
The change in mindset came when Noble’s neighbour, which operates childcare centres in some of the country’s poorest neighbourhoods, asked if he could help distribute meals to its three childcare centres. The challenge helped Noble flip his thinking about his own core business – collecting food donations and distributing them to 40 agencies in Northern Toronto – and start making a business case for food distribution.
“That was the start of reconceiving ourselves from being a charity to a non-profit food logistics company,” he says. “That contract led to others and now there are about 300 different non-profits in Toronto that buy food – either directly, or through food warehousing, logistics or distribution services – from us through our social enterprise, FoodReach. That makes us one of the country’s largest non-profit food wholesaling and distribution companies, in addition to the work we do as a food bank.”
That was 10 years ago and now he’s converting a former clothing factory into a new food hub. At three times the size of its current space with 10 times the cold storage, it’ll house head office and the distribution centre.
Noble says this success – the FoodReach comprises $3.4 million of its total annual revenue of $8.5 million – is partly due to his time at Queen’s.
“The academic experience was second to none, but what made Queen's invaluable for me were the opportunities to put classroom learning into practice.” For example, he ran an arts and science faculty organization that screened movies Sunday nights.
“It was also one of my first experiences managing a team of 12 – planning, meeting budgets, and building partnerships. At that age to have that experience was really valuable.”
Still at Queen’s, he spent summers managing Smith Business’s small-business consulting practice.
“I saw what real businesses were like,” he says. “That balanced classroom learning with the idea of innovation, experimentation and partnership, themes that have carried on in the work I do today.”
