Let the Madness begin.

March Can Madness, a fun, competitive food drive for Hopelink, is underway.

Ben Wobker of Redmond Physical Therapy came up with the idea of a canned food collection using “brackets,” similar to college basketball’s March Madness.

The tournament will start with 16 businesses, which will vie to see which teams can collect the most food for Hopelink.

So far, 15 businesses have signed up.

In addition to Redmond Physical Therapy, other Redmond businesses which have joined the contest are Evergreen Hospital Medical Center Primary Care at Redmond, Eastside Basketball Club, Foot Solutions, Dr. Ghislane Robert, VCA Redwood Animal Hospital, Palmer’s East, Falco Sult, Hancock’s Bakery, McDonalds Book Exchange, Roos Orthodontics, Redmond Family Dentistry, Bikram Hot Yoga, Foot Zone and Charter Bank.

Businesses with the greatest amount of food donations will advance to the next bracket.

Food will be weighed each Friday of the tournament — March 5, 12, 19, 26 — at the Hopelink Redmond Food Bank, 16225 NE 87th St., Suite A. Participating businesses should bring their food to be weighed between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on those days.

To make things fair (to account for varying numbers of employees and whatnot) a unique scoring system has been invented:

“The number in parentheses after the name of the business [in the bracket above] is their ‘score,’ not the pounds of food collected,” explained Denise Stephens, Hopelink’s public relations specialist. “In order to make the competition fair for businesses of all sizes, we took the pounds of food they brought in and divided it by the number of employees they have to give them a score.”

By 5 p.m. each Friday, participants will receive e-mails with the team standings and the brackets for the next week. Results will also be posted on the Redmond Reporter Web site.

For more information, contact Denise Stephens at Hopelink, denise@hopelink.org or (425) 869-2440.