Fighting food waste, hunger in the 2023 Toyota GR Corolla

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Nothing smells better than a busy bakery on a frosty morning. In this case however, there was no time to stop and smell the dinner rolls — a food rescue was in progress. A few minutes later, an all-black compact hatchback surges across town on high boost, its trunk filled with baked goods that are going to feed those that need them most.

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This is the 2023 Toyota GR Corolla, and it’s one of the most exciting products to come out of Toyota since the howling Lexus LFA. Yes, it may seem faintly ridiculous to mention a Corolla in the same breath as a V10-powered supercar, but the two were both built on the same factory line, and with similar labour-intensive craftsmanship. The GR looks like a normal Corolla hatchback, but it’s essentially a homologation-special rally car.

And this one is on a vital mission. Equipped with the Vancouver Food Runners app, I’m acting as the link between this East Vancouver bakery and Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood house. The food here will go towards one of the community kitchens run by the charity.

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If you know your Corolla history, you may already be familiar with Initial D, the animated series starring a young, talented driver and the David-versus-Goliath battles fought with his mid-1980s Corolla. Properly a Trueno Sprinter – the Japanese-market name for the car – this was a lightweight and agile rear-wheel-drive coupe. In the manga comics and animated series, the car is painted black and white, and inscribed with the name of the Fujiwara tofu shop. While the Initial D Trueno spends its nights racing RX-7s and Supras, it spends its days delivering tofu.

Thus, it’s all too fitting to use a modern hot Corolla to deliver food, too. Further, arriving at the drop-off location, this is basically the ultimate feel-good driving mission. In one swoop, we’ve taken the bakery’s overproduction, otherwise bound for the compost, and handed it directly to the volunteers who can put it to best use.

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The concept of Vancouver Food Runners is brilliant, and the app works flawlessly. Simply pull up the map to look for pickup locations in your area (known as “food rescues” in-app) or activate notifications for certain days. Ding! There’s food in need of saving. Click! — mission accepted. One-time food rescues crop up on the day or a few days in advance. Weekly commitments are also available. Get the details, select your rescue, and the app will even let you choose what mapping software you prefer. This is the first application of the tech in Canada.

The non-profit was founded by Tristan Yaeger, who has a long history of charitable and community service work. As a mother, she often found herself with downtime after dropping the kids at soccer games and the like. She wanted to spend more time volunteering, but it’s hard with busy after-school schedules.

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“We’re really in a good rhythm now,” she says, noting that in February alone more than 40,000 kg of food have been saved from waste and supplied to charities. That’s roughly 75,000 meals.

I used the app to set up a couple of rescues two days earlier. The second one has a pickup in downtown Kerrisdale, where parking’s often at a premium. No problem: the app shows a note from the supplier, another bakery, as to the best spot around back.

Meanwhile, the GR Corolla is really underlining why hot hatchbacks are the ultimate way to have your performance cake and eat it, too. The boosty little 1.6L three-cylinder has a characterful snarl, and hisses and flutters away like a golden-era Subaru or Mitsubishi rally car. It’s freezing out, but the adjustable-bias all-wheel-drive doles out plenty of grip, and snicking through the ratios in the six-speed manual is gearhead bliss.

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It’s a brilliant example of what the Brits call a “point-to-point car.” Sharper than Subaru’s WRX, the GR Corolla also comes with an all-weather AWD advantage over rivals like Hyundai’s N range. It’s not cheap, but it feels like it could rival Nissan’s Z or the Supra for performance.

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But then, it’s also a practical hatchback. At the next pickup, I simply flop down one of the seatbacks to cram an extra box of bread in the back. Food rescues vary in size, but the app comes with the ability to select the size of vehicle you have — or even if you want to use your bicycle.

Obviously you don’t need a 300-hp hot hatchback to do this kind of work. The Food Runners concept is designed to let volunteers fit a rescue or two per week (or whenever) into their busy schedules. There are 2,300 registered users, and of those, about 500 are most active. With kids dropped off, the family crossover would handle a rescue just fine. Better yet, bring the kids along, and get them involved.

The GR looks like a normal Corolla hatchback, but it's essentially a homologation-special rally car

Because, while the GR Corolla is fun and feisty, and there’s the feel-good factor of pitching in on charitable work, the real genius of the Food Runners system is how immediate the impact is. Those who donate the food are cheerfully happy to see you, and at the drop-offs you get to interact with those working to serve their community. My second drop-off is in the Downtown East Side, where the need is clearly visible.

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Yaeger says there’s an ebb and flow to the balance between available donations and volunteers, but there’s always a need for more help. Of the dozen or so notifications that popped up over a couple of days, most were soon snapped up.

The GR Corolla eventually has to go back to the automaker I borrowed it from and, though it is cliché to say, I return it with some reluctance. It steered well and snarled through triple exhausts, and generally drove and looked like it was infused with the spirit of a Star Wars TIE fighter. It will be missed.

But better than any rally-inspired hot hatchback is seeing the impact-feedback the Food Runners app tracks for you. In only a couple of runs, that’s more than 120 meals provided. More food rescues are in my near-future. I wonder if Toyota is planning on building a GR Sienna minivan?