BIG SKY, Mont. — This past weekend’s Big Sky Food and Wine Festival featured plenty of food, but organizers also had a plan for what would happen to the leftovers.
“What do we have left? We have celery root, some citrus, things like ginger, tomato, zucchini,” chef Eduardo Garcia said while showing off a cooler filled with extra ingredients.
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Garcia knows food well. He started flipping burgers at Chico Hot Springs when he was 15, then?
“I went to culinary school, I traveled around the world as a yacht chef, and I’ve continued to make food my passion in life. I’m an executive producer of the show ‘Big Sky Kitchen,’” Garcia said.
The Montana native has accomplished all of that with one hand after a hunting accident led to an amputation. He also served as a guest chef at the first annual Big Sky Food and Wine Festival.
“You have 30-plus chefs, plus all their chefs, plus a volunteer army. It’s a beehive of energy,” Garcia said.
Garcia said he alone served nearly 400 pounds of local regenerative organic food during the event.
“And so if you multiply that by 30 different chefs — tons of food,” Garcia said.
The festival drew about 650 people each day over a two-day period, according to John Speers, executive vice president of hospitality operations at Lone Mountain Land Company.
Speers said organizers wanted to make sure leftover food would benefit the community.
“Not everybody has the luxury of being able to come to an event like this and taste all this great food,” Speers said. “And we wanted to make sure that anything that was left over, we were going to give back to those individuals who are not as fortunate as the people who could come here.”
On Monday morning, the Big Sky Community Food Bank arrived to collect whatever they wanted from about 300 pounds of gourmet leftover food.
“We got all kinds of produce, everything from blueberries and citrus to peppers,” said Ben Keefe, food rescue coordinator for the Big Sky Community Food Bank. “Just a lot of good-quality whole food that will go to people.”
The Big Sky Community Food Bank has served nearly 2,000 people over the past year, and organizers said the donation will go a long way.
“I thought it was amazing because we like to have sustainable events here in Big Sky,” Keefe said. “And if they can benefit the community as well by giving unused items and getting those to people in need, that’s a win-win for everybody.”
Not all of the leftovers stayed in Big Sky. Organizers said remaining ingredients would be packed up and shipped to the Gallatin Valley Food Bank, which served nearly 12,000 individuals during the 2024-25 fiscal year.
As for leftover prepared meals that food banks cannot accept, Garcia said they would still avoid a trash.
“We’re going to get composting either on my farm or with Happy Trash in Bozeman,” Garcia said.
Either way, nothing goes to waste.
