Doing good isn’t just for students on campus at the University of Maryland. Alumni are doing their part to “Do Good” in the world after graduation, and the world is taking notice. Alumnus Evan Lutz ’14 was recently named to the 2017 Forbes List of Top 30 Social Entrepreneurs Under 30, making him the second former Do Good Challenge contestant to make the list. In 2015, Ben Simon ’14, founder of Food Recovery Network, was also named to Forbes’ List of Top 30 Social Entrepreneurs Under 30.
Lutz’ company, Hungry Harvest, works to buy “ugly” and surplus produce from farms and delivers fruits and vegetables through a subscription service to customers in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. They’ve recovered more than 1 million pounds of produce so far. The direct home produce delivery company works to increase access to fruits and vegetables while fighting hunger at the same time. The company works with local nonprofits to donate a healthy meal for every box of food a customer buys.
In early 2016, Lutz appeared on the ABC TV show Shark Tank and accepted a $100,000 offer from investor Robert Herjavec for 10 percent of his company. Lutz says he’s aiming to expand the company in the next five years to be the “largest direct-to-home food delivery service on the East Coast and the largest in the U.S. in 10.”
Lutz had a passion for solving hunger in America since college when he started Food Recovery CSA, designed to redistribute surplus healthy food to students. He competed in the 2014 Do Good Challenge with Food Recovery CSA and after he graduated he founded Hungry Harvest.
He says participating in the challenge helped him get started on his journey with Hungry Harvest, saying the feedback during the competition helped him restructure his business model and take his idea further.
