Today's blog is part of a series of blogs about how to make money with food-based businesses. To read the whole series, click here.
I work in an office building with a kitchen that is shared by about 40 or 50 people. As you might expect, the shared refrigerator can get pretty nasty after a while. For this reason, every few weeks the head of the maintenance dept. will send out an email to the company and announce that all fridges will be cleaned out over the weekend.
This is where you come in. But first, let me explain what exactly you will be getting into. Most of the food left in a community fridge is quite nasty. I am persistently amazed at the disgusting things that people will leave in the fridge. One time I saw a whole dead fish - I mean, with eyes and scales and everything, laying on an open plate with a sheet of wax paper over top. It was gone later that day, so I guess somebody gutted a fish in the sink and then put it in the toaster oven until it was done, or maybe ate it raw.
On several occasions I've seen raw ground beef, usually in some sort of container, but not always. Again, they must be cooking the stuff in the toaster oven or eating it cold and raw, because thats all we have in the kitchen.
So, my point is that the fridge is a very gross place, and food that has been left there for more than a few days is even more disgusting. BUT, on any given weekend you can find a few decent items if you are a disgusting human being and have low enough dietary standards.
All you have to do is wait for the maintenance email to go out on a friday afternoon. Then, late in the day after most people have left, you just go to the fridge and grab anything you want. This isn't so much an idea for making money, but its a good way to save money if you are a disgusting enough individual. Also, you are doing the maintenance crew a favor. Last January I got me a half gallon of month-old egg nog. It was open, but egg nog gets better with time.