By The Lipari Team

The Region’s Largest Food-show Rescue Turns Samples Into Meals, Fast

When the 2025 Lipari Food Show wrapped at Suburban Collection Showplace (Novi, MI) on April 9th, the lights didn’t go out — Forgotten Harvest lit up the floor. In the show’s now-signature food rescue, volunteers swept the hall to collect unopened, safe product from exhibitor booths and route it to hunger-relief partners across metro Detroit. Its purpose built into the playbook: the Lipari Food Show ends, and food moves straight to people who need it.

Forgotten Harvest calls the Lipari Food Show “the largest food show rescue of the year,” with past efforts topping 75,000+ pounds recovered in a single night. In 2023, Lipari and Forgotten Harvest reported 43,500+ pounds donated from the show; thousands of meals that might otherwise have gone to waste.

Why It Matters

Scale with speed. Forgotten Harvest routinely delivers 144,000 pounds of surplus food per day to local charities, so the post-show haul flows quickly into community channels, turning trade-floor abundance into next-day impact. As Progressive Grocer noted in its 2025 show coverage, everything is rescued at the end of the show: a rare, reliable close that pairs Lipari’s discovery engine with measurable good.

For attendees, it’s one more reason the Food Show is built different: deals for retailers, momentum for brands, and a zero-waste mindset that feeds the region. If you tasted it here, chances are it helped someone here, too.