Food Waste

Too Many Tomatoes? How Home Gardeners Are Finding a Good Home for Surplus Produce

Thu, 28 May 2026 21:44:36 GMT

Every summer, a familiar scene unfolds in backyard gardens across the country: vines heavy with tomatoes, zucchini overflowing their beds and fruit tree branches leaning low under the weight of a generous season. For millions of home gardeners, this abundant harvest quickly turns into a scramble to find a good home for the surplus.

Gary Oppenheimer recognized that this backyard bounty held the key to a community breakthrough. In May 2009, he founded AmpleHarvest.org, a lean digital platform designed to instantly route that fresh, homegrown produce straight from neighborhood dirt to the tables of local families who need it most.

A Solution Driven by Opportunity, Not Just Need

AmpleHarvest.org was born out of Oppenheimer’s own experiences as a gardener. He noticed a stark disconnect in the traditional anti-hunger architecture. Well-meaning food drives are built around nonperishables — jars, cans and boxes. Because it can take days, weeks or months for food from a traditional drive to reach a dinner table, fresh produce historically became a major choke point in the Feeding America Food Bank Network.

Meanwhile, millions of backyard gardeners across the country find themselves overwhelmed by surplus tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers every summer.

“The idea was that everybody thought that your food comes from farms and factories,” Oppenheimer says.

Today, there are an estimated 62 million people in America who garden for pleasure. Collectively, these gardeners grow an astonishing 11 billion pounds of surplus food annually — enough to feed 28 million people.

Instead of focusing on where the need is, AmpleHarvest.org focuses entirely on where the opportunity is. The model relies on a simple, “just-in-time” logic.

“The food can go from a home garden to a food pantry to a hungry family on a same-day basis,” Oppenheimer says.

Iris Arnold, president and co-founder of Leavenworth Mission Inc., says of the partnership, “[We’re] grateful and thankful for Apple Harvest. Their service helps to connect and bridge gaps between individuals who have a surplus and organizations that are in need.”

(Photo courtesy of Leavenworth Mission Inc.)

Hyperlocal Impact in Kansas City

Though AmpleHarvest.org operates on a national scale across 5,800 communities and connects more than 8,500 food pantries, its execution is hyperlocal.

A quick search of the AmpleHarvest.org database within a 50-mile radius of the Kansas City metropolitan area reveals an extensive network of active dots on the map. One of those registered partners is Leavenworth Mission in Leavenworth, Kan. By logging on to the platform, local gardeners can instantly see exactly when and where they can drop off their backyard surplus.

“[We’re] grateful and thankful for [AmpleHarvest.org]. Their service helps to connect and bridge gaps between individuals who have a surplus and organizations that are in need,” Leavenworth Mission co-founder and President Iris Arnold says of the partnership.

This direct connection eliminates the need for gleaning volunteers, heavy transportation overhead or expensive cold storage. The gardener simply drives down the road and donates their excess produce directly to a pantry that is ready to distribute it that very day.

“Without AmpleHarvest.org, more foods would be wasted and unused, because some organizations and people simply don’t know where to find connections to donate their goods,” Arnold says.

Sustained, Systemic Change

The brilliance of the model lies in its permanence. Unlike transactional programs that require ongoing volunteer coordination for every harvest, AmpleHarvest.org offers a systemic fix.

“Once you know that you can donate, the problem is permanently solved,” Oppenheimer says. “You will never not know that. And on top of that, it’s also viral.”

When a neighbor complains over the picket fence about having too many tomatoes, the knowledge spreads organically, he says.

The data backs up this grassroots enthusiasm: AmpleHarvest.org’s metrics show that 80% of gardeners want to donate their surplus if given the opportunity. Even more striking, 50% of gardeners will actually expand their gardens explicitly for donation once they know where the food can go.

Today, there are an estimated 62 million people in America who garden for pleasure. Collectively, these gardeners grow an astonishing 11 billion pounds of surplus food annually — enough to feed 28 million people.

(Photo courtesy of AmpleHarvest.org)

Expanding the Footprint

Operating with a lean staff of just four people, the organization relies heavily on technology and key partnerships. Google backs the initiative with $480,000 in free advertising to help reach growers, and corporate partners like Bonnie Plants help connect millions of seedling buyers to the cause.

AmpleHarvest.org has also expanded its toolkit to adapt to different regional realities:

Faith Fights Food Waste — A program providing scriptural, faith-specific sermons to priests, imams and rabbis to talk to their congregations about food waste, activating the 70% of food pantries housed in places of worship.
AmpleHarvest.org/government — A brand-new, friction-free toolkit designed for mayors, county executives and state officials to seamlessly implement the program locally at zero cost.
Indigenous Food Sovereignty — Tailored adaptations built alongside tribal elders to better serve Native American reservations, where per capita gardening rates are among the highest in the nation.

Ultimately, the goal is to expand the platform to 10,000 communities within the next three years. No matter the U.S. region, the invitation is simple: Look to your backyard; the solution to local fresh-food scarcity might just be growing on your own vine.

To find a local food pantry accepting fresh produce donations or to register a pantry in your community, visit ampleharvest.org/map .

The New Face of Food Rescue: How Farmlink is Rewriting Farm-Gate Logistics for Fresh Produce

Wed, 27 May 2026 17:28:18 GMT

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The narrative around agricultural food waste is changing. While diverting surplus produce from fields to food-insecure families is nothing new, the infrastructure, metrics and technology governing food rescue are changing in real time.

This shift was a central focus at the ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit held May 19–21 in Charlotte, N.C., where industry leaders gathered to discuss how today’s food recovery organizations are evolving. No longer just grassroots operations looking for a simple handout, these groups are operating as highly sophisticated logistics partners built to meet growers exactly where they are.

One innovator is The Farmlink Project , a national nonprofit that reroutes surplus produce directly at the farm level before it ever enters retail channels. It’s a logistically complex point in the supply chain, but one that is desperately needed.

A Product of Crisis, Built for Scale

Farmlink started as a pandemic-era grassroots movement. In 2020, a group of college students watched the news in horror as supply chains collapsed, hospitality venues shut down and millions of pounds of viable food rotted in fields while food bank lines wrapped around city blocks. The founders recognized a glaring paradox: The issue wasn’t a lack of food or a lack of need, but a failure of connection.

“Getting that food from point A to point B was the challenge,” says Eliza Blank, CEO of Farmlink. “And not only was it about coordinating the transportation of that food, but it was actually paying for the transportation of that food.”

Today, the organization has scaled remarkably, moving upward of 2 million lb. to 2.5 million lb. of fresh food every single week.

Pictured from left, Ayurella Horn-Muller, food and ag writer for Grist Eliza Blank, CEO for Farmlink, Jay Hawkins, director of food recovery programs for Feeding New York State and Adam Lowy, executive director and founder of Move for Hunger.

(Photo: Jill Dutton)

Acting as the Farmer’s “Last Call”

For growers, packers and shippers, the financial and logistical strain of dealing with sudden surplus can be paralyzing. Because fresh produce is highly perishable, the clock is always ticking. Farmlink has optimized its operations to handle these tight timelines, executing rescues within a strict 24-to-48-hour window. Also important, Farmlink doesn’t try to compete with a farmer’s bottom line. The goal is to be a seamless safety net.

“Farmers don’t want to donate their food, they want to sell their food,” Blank says. “And when they can’t sell their food on the primary market or on the secondary market, then they know, or we hope they know, to call Farmlink. And so it’s our relationships that allow us to move so quickly, and it’s the freight and the transportation that we provide, in addition to the coordination, that makes this work possible.”

By stepping in to cover the freight costs and logistics, Farmlink removes the traditional barriers that historically forced growers to abandon or destroy crops.

Moving Beyond Pounds Diverted

For years, the gold standard for PR in the food rescue space has been total pounds diverted. It’s a clean, legible number for a press release, but Blank argues it is a flawed metric that fails to address the real needs of communities and disincentivizes true equity. You cannot feed a community on a single massive shipment of tomatoes alone, she says.

Instead, Farmlink is pushing the industry toward a more deliberate and intentional approach — focusing on getting the right food, in the right format, to the right community, at the right time. Doing so requires moving past volume-driven metrics and focusing heavily on long-term infrastructure investments, like regional cold storage and coordinated logistics hubs.

“If we only and exclusively focus on pounds, we are not giving due pressure to the infrastructure investments that we need,” Blank says. “A funder is going to say, ‘Well, why don’t you deliver more pounds of food?’ It’s like, ‘Because we’re over here building the whole system that is going to make this delivery possible.’ You have to actually be able to balance that narrative to say, ‘Yes, of course, we can deliver pounds, but also we need to make these incredible investments in infrastructure that will outlast next week’s pounds.’”

The Power of Collaboration

As federal safety nets shift and food insecurity fluctuates, Farmlink isn’t trying to build an empire or consolidate the food rescue space. Coming from the fast-paced venture capital and direct-to-consumer corporate world, Blank quickly realized the fragmentation of the food rescue sector is actually its greatest strength. Different regions and communities require niche, localized interventions. The future of agricultural sustainability relies entirely on different sectors of the supply chain communicating and cooperating seamlessly.

“What I quickly realized was no, it’s actually fragmented on purpose that every individual and every community needs specific interventions,” Blank says. “And so what I realized then was that what we’re really good at here ... is collaboration and cooperation. I think that’s really what drives the work forward. It’s not about consolidation and roll-ups, it’s actually about cooperation and collaboration, and doing the thing that you do well.”

For the produce industry, Farmlink represents a new era of waste management — one rooted in strong relationship building, rapid-response logistics and a commitment to building a resilient system that benefits the farmer, the family and the planet.

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The Packaging Paradox: Balancing Food Waste and Material Sustainability in Fresh Produce

Tue, 26 May 2026 17:42:13 GMT

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The intersection of food waste mitigation and packaging design creates a natural paradox, a panel says.

At the ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit May 19-21, a featured panel brought together diverse voices from across the food value chain to address the friction between material management and hunger relief. The discussion featured four primary experts: moderator Jackie Suggitt, vice president of business initiatives and community engagement for ReFED; Jeana Cadby, environment and climate director for Western Growers Association; Rebecca Chesney, vice president of sustainability for ISS Guckenheimer; and Leslie Rodgers, marketing and communications director for BPI.

Together, the panelists explored a natural operational paradox: “Done well, packaging is a phenomenal solution with our lens of food waste ... Done poorly, it drives more waste of food and materials,” Suggitt says. In assessing the current industry landscape, she explains that stakeholders lean slightly more toward viewing packaging as a peril rather than a promise, signaling a collective friction regarding environmental impacts, consumer confusion and shifting regulations.

Functionality of Fresh Produce Packaging

For the fresh produce sector, packaging is not merely a marketing tool; it dictates supply chain viability. Fresh produce is a living product harvested at peak freshness, requiring careful environmental management to maintain shelf life.

Cadby compares selling fresh produce to holding a melting ice cube and asking somebody how much they’re going to pay for it.

To manage this limited shelf life without a biological “kill step,” she says, packaging must provide functional sustainability — a design mindset prioritizing the physical protection of the crop alongside waste reduction. According to Cadby, key functional mechanics include:

Pre-consumer logistics — Approximately “90% of the work that packaging does happens before the consumer ever even sees it.”
Microclimate regulation — The packaging actively works toward “maintaining moisture and temperature; it’s the gas exchange, [and] protection.”
Traceability and equity — Crop packaging, such as berry clamshells, allows supply chains to trace safety recalls and ensure field laborers are adequately compensated for their specific yield.
Commodity-specific design — Cadby highlights how packaging choices must be tailored strictly to the functionality of the packaging rather than applying blanket material mandates.

Supply Chain Realities and the B2B Pipeline

Modern agricultural infrastructure requires transporting highly perishable items across vast geographic distances, such as shipping strawberries from Salinas, Calif., to Ottawa, Ontario. Historically, products like iceberg lettuce relied on heavy wooden crates packed with physical ice for transit; today, advanced polymers replace those material-heavy systems to optimize economics and food safety.

While retail packaging remains highly visible to the public, the business-to-business sector offers massive, underexplored opportunities for packaging optimization. Unlike retail consumers who demand transparent plastic clamshells to inspect produce for mold, commercial kitchens and foodservice operators handle bulk volumes. This allows commercial entities to pilot B2B circularity programs, such as returning durable plastic buckets to vendors, bypassing multilayered consumer packaging and removing single-use plastics where cross-contamination or allergen risks are minimal.

Innovation Bottleneck and Legislative Friction

The fresh produce industry frequently runs into systemic roadblocks when sustainable design innovations clash with legislative mandates and infrastructure deficits.

For instance, the strawberry industry heavily optimized the traditional polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, clamshell. Cadby says, “The strawberry PET clamshell is one of the most recyclable items that you can have ... [Manufacturers] have what’s called a BOPP (biaxially oriented polypropylene) EBO label that you can actually just take, makes it more recyclable because you’re not having that contamination from the paper sticker ... but a lot of policy is saying, well, no more of this material.”

This misalignment highlights a broader systemic issue:

Infrastructure deficits — Emerging zero-waste policies frequently mandate a shift toward compostable or recyclable packaging, yet regional municipalities routinely lack the processing facilities or infrastructure to support them. Rodgers summarizes: “Regulation without the infrastructure to support implementations of regulation, right?”
Extended Producer Responsibility — Rapidly expanding EPR laws, enacted in states like California, Oregon, Colorado and Washington, legally shift the financial burden of end-of-life material management back onto the producers, Cadby says.
Timeline fractures — While regulatory targets and public expectations operate on compressed timelines, building the physical waste infrastructure, stabilizing secondary material markets and executing massive consumer education campaigns require a multidecade transition, Rodgers says.

According to the panel, true progress requires shifting the dialogue away from purely banning specific materials and focusing instead on building synchronized systems where functional packaging design aligns directly with regional processing infrastructure.

“The compostable products and packaging industry is so young, and it has so much promise for being a part of the solution that we’re all trying to figure out,” Rodgers says.

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On-Site Production Solves Rising Volatility in Industrial Ethylene Supply

Fri, 22 May 2026 19:15:20 GMT

Global geopolitical tensions are disrupting petrochemical and energy markets, making ethylene supply less stable and more expensive. In some regions, especially Asia, supply is tightening and prices are already rising. This is creating uncertainty for industries that depend on a reliable supply of ethylene, including fresh produce ripening operations, according to Catalytic Generators.

Industrial ethylene used in conventional cylinder-based ripening systems is produced from oil and natural gas through petrochemical processes. Most global ethylene production is prioritized for large industrial sectors such as plastics and chemicals, with fruit ripening representing only a small downstream use.

Because ethylene is essential to the ripening process, any disruption in supply can directly impact ripening operations. Since fruit ripening is only a small downstream use of ethylene, supply is largely determined by the needs and priorities of much larger industries. During periods of market disruption, this can lead to shortages, rising costs and uncertainty for ripening businesses that rely on a consistent ethylene supply.

“Industrial ethylene is primarily produced for large-scale petrochemical applications, with fruit ripening requiring a relatively small amount,” says Catalytic Generators President and CEO Greg Akins. “This means that ripening operations rely on a supply chain driven by other industries, which can make them more vulnerable to disruption when market conditions shift.”

In this context, there are essentially two ways to approach ethylene supply. One is to continue relying on externally sourced, petrochemical-based ethylene, which remains exposed to fluctuations in availability and pricing driven by broader industrial and geopolitical dynamics. The other is to generate pure ethylene directly on-site, allowing operators to produce the gas within the ripening room and reduce reliance on external sourcing.

Against this backdrop, ripening operators are increasingly reassessing their supply strategies. According to Akins, there is growing interest in some regions where the use of conventional cylinder systems persists. Users want greater supply reliability and security, either by transitioning to alternative solutions or by maintaining their current system while introducing a second source of ethylene. Catalytic has received inquiries from some Asian markets affected by recent supply constraints. This shift reflects a broader awareness of the risks associated with reliance on industrial ethylene, particularly in times of geopolitical and market instability.

Building a More Resilient Ethylene Supply Strategy

For ripening operators, the priority is not only to secure ethylene but to ensure that it is ready when needed in the ripening process. Building resilience therefore means reducing exposure to supply disruptions, improving planning certainty and ensuring that ethylene is ready to be used when fruit is ready to be treated.

In this context, solutions based on on-site ethylene generation are gaining attention as a way to strengthen supply reliability. Catalytic Generators, with more than 50 years of experience in ethylene application, says it offers systems such as its Easy-Ripe generators, which produce pure ethylene on demand directly within the ripening room using Ethy-Gen II, a formulation derived from renewable, sustainable sources.

The company says this approach allows operators to produce ethylene on demand for ripening, exactly when it is needed, reducing reliance on external supply chains where industrial ethylene is primarily used as a feedstock for plastics and chemicals production. By generating ethylene on-site, operators can maintain consistent ripening performance without being exposed to supply disruptions or competing industrial demand.

Catalytic Generators says the systems are also simple to install and operate, with a proven international track record and global support network that provides reliable service and technical support.

“With ethylene playing a critical role in the ripening of fruits such as bananas, avocados and citrus, ensuring consistent availability is essential. Increasingly, this means having solutions in place that allow operators to maintain control and reduce dependency on industrial ethylene,” Akins says.

What U.S. Grocers Can Learn From U.K. Retailers to Turn Produce Waste Into Protected Profit

Mon, 18 May 2026 15:13:46 GMT

In the grocery industry, managing the produce aisle has always been a race against the clock, where shelf life is measured in mere days and financial margins are razor-thin.

While many U.S. retailers treat surplus or cosmetically imperfect fruits and vegetables as a late-evening write-off, their U.K. counterparts have long treated waste mitigation as a disciplined, morning operational routine. In this Q&A, Alex Considine Tong, chief product officer for Retail Insight , outlines the valuable lessons U.S. grocers can learn from the U.K.’s highly scrutinized market.

Drawing on data from over 700 grocers, Considine Tong explains how shifting from rigid expiration dates to predictive, morning sell-through signals can help store teams intervene proactively. By adopting these proven British practices and applying smart inventory reconciliation to non-bar-coded items, U.S. grocers can seamlessly merge sustainability with commercial survival — capturing shopper intent while the product is still fresh.

The Packer: Markdown windows are a major lever for sustainability. But in the produce aisle, where shelf life is measured in days rather than weeks, how can U.S. retailers use store-level data to identify the exact “tipping point” for a bag of salad or a crate of peaches before they become unsellable?

Considine Tong: The challenge with produce is that the tipping point isn’t stamped on the packaging. A printed date tells you when something expires; it doesn’t tell you whether you’re going to sell it before then. That gap between “it’s still within date” and “it’s still going to sell” is where a lot of produce waste actually happens.

What I’ve seen work well is moving away from date-only triggers and toward sell-through signals. If you combine how quickly a product is moving at the shelf, what hourly sales rates look like relative to the stock on hand and how many days of life remain, you get a much sharper picture of where the real risk sits. A bagged salad with three days left but a sell-through trajectory of 60% needs attention today, not tomorrow evening.

With WasteInsight, that kind of signal surfaces as a clear action for the store team: Mark this down now, while it’s still desirable, rather than waiting until it’s close to the bin. That timing distinction matters both for waste and for margin. A 20% markdown at 10 a.m. moves product. A 50% markdown at 7 p.m. saves very little.

The other piece is ordering. When sell-through signals feed back into buying decisions, teams start to see where they’ve been consistently over-ordering certain lines and can pull back before the problem repeats. That’s where the sustainability and the commercial discipline converge.

There is a common perception in U.S. that ESG (environmental, social and governance) initiatives are a luxury for stable economies. Given your visibility into 700-plus grocers, can you provide a specific example of how financial discipline and sustainability converge specifically within the produce department? How does reducing shrink directly buffer a retailer against inflation?

There’s a tendency in some conversations to treat sustainability and margin as separate priorities, something you focus on when times are good and trade off when costs are rising. From what I see across hundreds of grocers, that’s exactly the wrong framing. In produce particularly, they’re the same conversation.

Produce is one of the highest-shrink categories in grocery. When fruit or vegetables spoil before they’re sold, retailers have already paid for that product. The cost is locked in. The only question is whether they recover any revenue from it or write it off entirely. In an environment where procurement, logistics and energy costs are all climbing, every unit that reaches a shopper’s basket instead of the bin is directly offsetting that pressure.

What I consistently see is that a large share of produce shrink is avoidable. It tends to come from three places: markdowns that happen too late to drive sell-through, stock that’s in the backroom rather than on the shelf and ordering patterns that repeat last week’s mistake rather than adjusting to what actually sold. Addressing those three things doesn’t require a sustainability budget; it requires better timing and better signals.

The retailers managing this well have moved from treating markdowns as an end-of-day clean-up to treating them as a proactive margin lever earlier in the day, while the product is still fresh and shoppers still have intent to buy. In inflationary conditions, recovering that margin on a consistent basis adds up considerably.

The U.K. is noted for having higher regulatory and public scrutiny. What is one specific “exit rule” or “ordering behavior” common in U.K. produce departments that U.S. grocers have yet to adopt but could implement tomorrow to see an immediate drop in waste?

One of the clearest behavioral differences I’ve observed between U.K. and U.S. grocery operations is how markdowns are timed. Part of what drives this in U.K. is the regulatory and public scrutiny environment: food waste reporting obligations and retailer sustainability commitments are far more embedded in U.K. grocery than they currently are in U.S., which means store teams and buyers are held more visibly accountable for what ends up in the bin. That accountability has shaped how the industry thinks about markdowns, not as a loss-recovery tool but as a routine operational discipline.

In many U.K. produce departments, the markdown decision is tied to sell-through progress at a defined point in the day, not to how close a product is to its end of life. The discipline I’ve seen is essentially: If a product hasn’t hit a certain sell-through threshold by midmorning, it gets a controlled price reduction while it’s still fresh and there’s still footfall to take advantage of it.

The contrast with common U.S. practice is stark. Markdowns often happen late in the evening, when sell-through is already a lost cause. By that point, you’re discounting because the product is about to expire, not because you’re trying to move it. That’s the difference between a commercial intervention and a write-off with a yellow sticker on it.

The ordering side of this is equally important. U.K. teams I’ve spoken with often run tighter guardrails on short-life replenishment, adjusting volume based on recent sell-through and waste rather than repeating the same order regardless of what moved. If yesterday’s data shows a line underperformed, today’s order adjusts. That sounds straightforward, but it requires the right signals reaching the right people quickly enough to act.

Both of these are changes U.S. retailers could make without waiting for a major systems transformation. The tools to surface those signals exist. The bigger shift is cultural: treating the markdown decision as something that happens at 10 a.m. based on data rather than at 9 p.m. based on what’s still on the shelf.

Produce often lacks the rigid bar codes and tracking of dry goods (think bulk apples or loose greens). How does Retail Insight help grocers solve the inventory inaccuracy problem for non-bar-coded items, and what impact does that accuracy have on preventing over-ordering?

Non-bar-coded produce is genuinely one of the harder parts of fresh inventory management. With packaged goods, you have a scan at the till that tells you a unit left the store. With loose apples or bulk salad greens, that unit-level signal often doesn’t exist in the same way, which means the store’s system may have a very different view of what’s on hand versus what’s actually sitting on the shelf or in the backroom.

What we focus on is building a clearer picture from the signals that do exist: deliveries, expected sales curves for that line and that day, markdown activity, waste recorded by the store team. Taken together, these give a working reconciliation of where inventory should be against how the product is actually selling. That reconciliation won’t always be perfect for every loose item, but it’s considerably more actionable than any single data point in isolation.

Where this matters most practically is in identifying discrepancies early. If expected sell-through and actual sales are diverging for a short-life produce line, that’s a signal worth acting on before the product runs out of time. And from an ordering perspective, visibility into those patterns helps store teams and buyers understand where they’re consistently ordering more than they sell, which is one of the most persistent drivers of produce waste.

The principle I keep coming back to is this: Better ordering prevents waste more reliably than any markdown. Markdowns recover value from product that’s already at risk. Better inventory signals stop you buying more risk than you need to in the first place.

In U.K., “wonky” or “ugly” produce campaigns are mainstream. From a data perspective, do you see a missed opportunity for U.S. retailers to use dynamic markdowns for aesthetically imperfect produce earlier in the day, rather than waiting until the item is at the end of its life cycle?

Yes, and I think it’s a bigger opportunity than most U.S. operators currently recognize. In U.K., wonky or imperfect produce ranges have become a mainstream category; there are shoppers who actively look for them as a value option. That normalizes the idea that cosmetically imperfect doesn’t mean nutritionally inferior or unsafe, and it opens up a whole sell-through window that U.S. grocery stores largely aren’t using.

The data question is about timing and early identification. Product that’s slightly misshapen or cosmetically off tends to move more slowly at full price, which means it builds up sell-through risk faster than standard lines. When you can see that risk accumulating earlier in the day, you have options: a modest markdown in the morning when footfall is high, better placement at the shelf or a clearer price signal to shoppers who are already looking for value.

What I observe in stores that handle this well is that the markdown doesn’t need to be deep to be effective. The value for the shopper in a morning markdown on imperfect produce isn’t the dramatic discount; it’s the availability and the freshness. That’s a very different proposition to a steep end-of-day reduction on something that’s been sitting on the shelf all day and is approaching its final hours.

The broader opportunity for U.S. retailers is to stop treating produce markdowns as a loss-recovery mechanism and start treating them as an active sell-through tool. The earlier you intervene with the right product at the right price point, the more revenue you recover and the less ends up as shrink.

The Produce Moms to Serve as an Official Partner of EPA’s Freedom 250 Efforts

Fri, 15 May 2026 20:37:21 GMT

The Produce Moms has been named an educational partner of the EPA’s Freedom 250 efforts through the Feed It Onward initiative.

Feed It Onward is a national, partner-driven initiative that spotlights successful efforts to keep food in use and out of landfills, elevating real-world stories from farms, companies, grocery retailers, waste operators and nonprofits.

The initiative will celebrate the 250th birthday of the U.S. by honoring the people who keep the country moving forward.

By partnering with Feed It Onward, The Produce Moms says it will leverage its consumer platforms and fresh produce expertise to help share Feed It Onward’s stories in ways that resonate with families, retailers and educators. Through its digital channels, podcast, media appearances and branded products, The Produce Moms plans to highlight the people and partnerships turning surplus food into family meals and practical solutions that support local communities.

“The Produce Moms supports the view that food is too valuable to waste, which complements our mission to ensure fruits and vegetables belong on every table,” says Lori Taylor, founder and CEO of The Produce Moms. “As a participant in the EPA’s Feed It Onward initiative, we’re honored to help tell the stories of innovators, farmers and community leaders who are proving that common-sense solutions can reduce food waste, save families money and strengthen our food system.”

According to EPA’s 2025 report, “Estimating the Cost of Food Waste to Consumers,” more than one-third of all food in the U.S. goes uneaten and often ends up in landfills, the largest single component of landfill materials. The report estimates the cost of food waste to each U.S. consumer, the price paid for food (edible parts only) that is not eaten, to be $728 per year, or $14 per week. For a household of four (scaling proportionally to the per capita estimate), the estimated annual cost of food waste is $2,913, with a weekly cost of $56. This represents approximately 11% of an American consumer’s food expenditures (both within and outside of the home), based on the USDA’s Food Expenditure Series.

“Feed It Onward is about showcasing solutions, like those championed by The Produce Moms, that are already making a difference and expanding their impact nationwide,” says Lee Zeldin, EPA administrator. “As I’ve traveled across the country and met with partners in communities large and small, I’ve seen firsthand the pride people take in stepping up and making a difference locally. That spirit of innovation, responsibility and community leadership makes this country strong, and it’s exactly the kind of momentum we need more of across America.”

Hannaford Hits Record 29M Pounds in Food Donations as Retailer Expands Northeast Safety Net

Wed, 13 May 2026 16:34:58 GMT

As food insecurity continues to challenge families across the Northeast, Hannaford Supermarkets says it has expanded its community support systems, headlined by a record-breaking 29 million pounds of food diverted from waste to local dinner tables this past year.

The retailer’s 2025 Community Impact Report shows a shift toward deeper, more strategic regional investments, moving beyond traditional charitable giving to provide $1.3 million for child wellness and $1.5 million for local education. By leveraging a network of 450 hunger-relief organizations and 1,000 local vendors, the Scarborough-based company says it is increasingly positioning its 188 stores as essential infrastructure for regional stability in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont.

The 2025 report showcases how Hannaford is moving beyond traditional retail to serve as a cornerstone of community health and sustainability.

“At Hannaford, we believe strongly in the power of doing good in the communities we serve,” says Ericka Dodge Katz, director of external communications and community impact for Hannaford Supermarkets. “This is especially felt in our approach to addressing food insecurity, which is grounded in robust local partnerships and shaped by associates who understand the needs of the communities they call home. Whether it’s supporting the work of local nonprofits or making daily donations to ensure families have access to healthy food, we’re proud to support initiatives that are making a meaningful impact every day.”

2025 Impact Highlights

Combating hunger: Through the Fresh Rescue program, Hannaford donated 29 million pounds of fresh, nutritious food — a 15% increase since 2022. This effort supported more than 450 local food pantries and hunger-relief organizations.
Direct financial investment: Hannaford provided $400,000 in direct support to regional food banks and saw the Hannaford Charitable Foundation invest $1.16 million into nine strategic organizations focusing on food access, health and education.
Empowering youth: The Eat Well, Be Well initiative contributed $1.3 million toward child health and wellness, while the Hannaford Helps Schools program donated $1.5 million to more than 1,700 schools across the Northeast.
Investing in local: Hannaford continues to champion regional economies, sourcing 8,000 store items from over 1,000 local vendors, including more than 125 local farmers.
Environmental leadership: The report reaffirms Hannaford’s status as a sustainability leader, maintaining zero food waste-to-landfill and progressing toward its goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

A Culture of Care

Beyond external donations, the report underscores Hannaford’s commitment to its 28,000-plus associates. In 2025, the retailer focused on expanded development opportunities and community-centered initiatives, ensuring that the people who serve the community are equally supported.

This dedication to transparency and impact earned Hannaford the PRNews Platinum Award for CSR, ESG or DEI Report for its 2024 edition, setting a high bar for the 2025 release.

“Our approach to addressing food insecurity is grounded in robust local partnerships and shaped by associates who understand the needs of the communities they call home,” Dodge Katz says.

Divert Opens Washington Facility to Expand Circular Infrastructure for Unsold Food in Pacific Northwest

Wed, 06 May 2026 19:37:59 GMT

Divert Inc., a circular economy company on a mission to prevent food from being wasted, has opened its Integrated Diversion & Energy Facility in Longview, Wash., the first of its kind in the state. The 66,000 sq. ft. facility leverages Divert’s high-recovery depackaging technology and anaerobic digestion to process unsold food and organic materials into renewable energy and nutrient-rich fertilizers that support further food growth in the region. At full capacity, the facility will be capable of processing up to 100,000 tons of unsold, nondonatable food annually.

The facility expands clean energy and organics diversion infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest, creating a circular system that captures the value from uneaten food and keeps it in the regional economy. At capacity, the facility will transform the material it receives into over 235,000 MMBtu of renewable energy and 450,000 lb. of nutrient-rich fertilizer annually — enough to power over 3,200 homes and support the growth of 225 million lb. of apples. Divert’s facility helps bring Washington and Oregon closer to their goals to reduce wasted food and greenhouse gas emissions by offsetting up to 23,000 metric tons of CO₂e each year through its operations. This advanced, purpose-built infrastructure will have impacts across the food value chain, from sending data upstream to facilitate source reduction and edible food recovery, to setting a new standard for downstream purity in land-applied soil amendments derived from food materials.

“The Longview facility will help build a more resilient, circular food system in the Pacific Northwest with energy, agriculture and economic impacts well beyond our operations,” says Ryan Begin, CEO and co-founder of Divert. “Across the country, waste systems are becoming more complex, and disposal is moving farther from where material is generated. We need solutions that keep value local. Our model is proven to increase food donation, recover energy and return nutrients back into the regional economy in an efficient, scalable way. That supports compliance, strengthens agricultural communities and advances greater energy independence.”

Divert Inc. has opened its Integrated Diversion & Energy Facility in Longview, Wash., the first of its kind in the state.

(Photo courtesy of Divert Inc.)

Through the new facility, Divert provides its integrated services to some of the largest food retailers and manufacturers in the Pacific Northwest, including Albertsons, Fred Meyer, Kroger, Reser’s Fine Foods, Safeway and more, while a partnership with Feeding America helps to optimize donation opportunities to people facing hunger in the local community.

“Our partnership with Divert and the new Longview facility give us an integrated organics diversion solution in the region we can rely on,” says Danelle Macias, senior director of sales and support for Albertsons, Portland Division. “Service reliability is essential to our business, and this is the kind of partnership where the operational details are taken care of, so we can focus on servicing our customers and communities.”

The facility also supports businesses navigating an expanding landscape of organics regulations, including Washington’s Organics Management Law and Portland’s business food scraps requirement, which require companies to divert organic waste from landfills.

“People often forget about the enormous climate impact of food production — and, by extension, food waste,” says Oregon metro councilor Christine Lewis. “By giving food scraps a circular-economy market option, Divert’s work elegantly addresses both halves of the equation. This is what innovation looks like.”

State leaders also emphasize the project’s impact on the regional workforce and long-term economic opportunity.

“For more than a decade, the Longview region has seen promising projects come and go, but Divert is different. It has followed through on its commitment to invest in this community,” says Heather Kurtenbach, executive secretary, Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council. “From the earliest stages, they partnered locally, prioritized our skilled workforce and ensured that good-paying construction jobs stayed right here in Longview. This project demonstrates that our region’s deep industrial roots and talented workforce can once again support major manufacturing investments and help lead Washington’s climate technology future.”

Longview, a major industrial region for the Pacific Northwest, offers close proximity to utilities capable of receiving renewable natural gas. Through an interconnection agreement with Cascade Natural Gas, RNG from the facility is fed directly into the existing distribution pipeline to power homes, businesses and hard-to-electrify industries in the area.

Divert is a portfolio company of Ara Partners, a global private equity, infrastructure and energy firm focused on decarbonizing the industrial economy. To learn more about Divert, click here.

The Farmlink Project Breaks the Silence on Surplus Produce

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 22:56:03 GMT

The latest campaign from The Farmlink Project, a nonprofit that connects farmers with surplus produce to food banks, highlights how the organization rescued 6 million pounds of potatoes.

Eliza Blank, CEO of The Farmlink Project, says growers are facing this surplus due to a bumper crop year in the U.S. and in Europe, which makes it difficult for U.S. growers to send the potatoes to processing overseas.

Aidan Reilly, co-founder of The Farmlink Project, says the other problem is that the domestic market for potatoes collapsed during this time of strong yields and U.S. potato growers feel powerless to discuss these challenges.

“Every mention that there’s surplus product in the market hurts the market even more and hurts these people and these families even more,” Reilly says. “This hush-hush nature — while there’s just millions of dollars being lost, farmers struggling and just mountains of not just potatoes, whatever the produce of the season might be just rotting.”

Breaking the Taboo of the Bumper Crop

Reilly says he learned about the surplus through a Facebook post and knew Farmlink needed to help. Blank says growers don’t want food to go to waste, yet in a complicated fresh produce supply chain, it might mean that growers don’t see many options for their surplus.

“What I’ve come to learn and appreciate about the work we do is that there are so many stakeholders in food and in food systems,” Blank says. “And it is very challenging to try and satisfy all of them, even though they may all have equal importance.”

She says this puts growers in an unfortunate situation where food donation might be a conduit for the surplus, but maybe they don’t know where to turn.

“They’re in a position where they can’t talk about it; it also means a lot of the food just isn’t getting donated,” she says. “These farmers want to donate food. You don’t grow food and then trash it without feeling something very deeply.”

Aidan Reilly, co-founder of The Farmlink Project, says he hopes a new campaign about the organization’s efforts takes some of the taboo away from food surplus.

(Photo courtesy of The Farmlink Project)

From Social Media Sensation to Supply Chain Solution

To call attention to this surplus and to promote the work that Farmlink does — tracking down surplus produce and getting it to communities in need — the organization launched a Food Search and Rescue unit and a social media campaign.

The campaign features creative videos and language to draw people in with novelty, keeping consumers around for the message.

“We just decided to go all in on that concept where it’s like we’re going to make something fun and short and shareable,” he says. “But if you’re going to get one message across, it’s about what Farmlink exists for, which is we’re going to go out wherever this is in the middle of a field and find where this product is.”

He says that message seems to resonate with Farmlink’s social media audience.

“I have many anecdotes of people who clicked on us because of something fun or funny we did,” Reilly says. “And now they’ve become fully aware of the situation in the United States, and those are really valuable transformations for me. That’s a huge win in our eyes. That’s why we do stuff like this.”

While there is a fundraiser as a part of this campaign , Reilly says the real focus of this search and rescue campaign is to raise awareness of the need for solutions like Farmlink.

“We wanted something to point to. We wanted strong imagery. We wanted people to get impressions, attention that we can point to, drive more focus toward something like this, because it’s not the last time it’s going to happen,” he says. “It’s not the first time.”

Eliza Blank, CEO of The Farmlink Project, says the messaging of this campaign highlights the work the organization does to find surplus food and get it into the hands of food banks and those in need.

(Photo courtesy of The Farmlink Project)

More Than Point A to Point B

Reilly says it was important to share the story about how growers end up with surplus and how it ties into the bigger fresh produce supply chain. He also sees it as important to highlight the work Farmlink does.

“What we’re trying to [do], as always, is push the availability and the solution of food rescue as an option for when things like that happen to make sure this stuff doesn’t go to waste,” he says. “It’s not waste until it goes to waste.”

Reilly says that means the growing community needs to be more transparent and open.

“If we can remove some of the taboo around this, then we can make sure the food gets to people who need it,” he says.

Blank also says that this campaign is a nod to the work Farmlink does to make this food rescue possible.

“When you’re talking about commodity-level surplus, there are big questions that FarmLink is always trying to answer,” she says. “‘Where is it? Where does it need to go and how is it going to get there?’ And in order to do that, that takes a lot more than the point A to point B down the road that we’ve become exceptionally good at.”

Blank says that the ultimate goal of raising awareness of this food surplus is for growers to contact Farmlink.

“We want people to know to pick up the phone and call Farmlink when they’re sitting on surplus, because we can make sure that it gets to a community in need,” she says. “We have a very sophisticated and thoughtful infrastructure to do this effectively and efficiently. There’s not a lot of red tape.”

Harps Food Stores Shares How Freshness Innovation Drives Nearly 10% Sales Growth

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:59:40 GMT

Mike Roberts, vice president of produce operations with Harps Food Stores, says his team noticed elevated shrinkage in its broccoli crowns due to moisture loss; the crowns had reduced firmness and a decline in quality.

However, fixing the issue required more than one approach.

“While temperature management is critical, it wasn’t fully addressing these challenges, so we needed an additional solution to better maintain product integrity,” he says.

Addressing Shrink, Improving Quality

This is where Roberts began working with the team at Verdant Technologies to trial the HarvestHold solution in its broccoli to address these issues. Roberts says the Harps team was aware of HarvestHold for a while, so they decided to implement a trial as he saw it was a fit with seeking to enhance performance in key categories.

Matthew Aronson, chief revenue officer of Verdant Technologies, says the conversation with Harps and adding HarvestHold stemmed from the need to extend the quality of the broccoli. Aronson says that HarvestHold’s technology blocks ethylene to address the water loss that the Harps team saw and that it helps the broccoli maintain firmness.

“We talked about seven extra days of shelf life with naked iceless broccoli and what that could mean to reducing shrink or food waste at the store and certainly at home for the shoppers,” Aronson says.

Verdant Technologies worked with Harps’ broccoli supplier, Ocean Mist, to implement this trial. Aronson says it was a team effort to get this trial in action, which spanned several months. Harps’ distribution partner, Associated Wholesale Growers, is also working to introduce HarvestHold across its retail network.

“Kudos, Ocean Mist, who has been a longtime partner of ours on the broccoli side and working with not just Harps but [also] the AWG team,” he says. “We executed this over not just a couple weeks. This is a few months to get a sizable enough data set.”

Measurable Gains in Sales and Sustainability

Roberts says that since implementing HarvestHold, broccoli volume at Harps stores has increased by 9.96%.

“While multiple factors can influence sales, we believe improved shelf life and better at-home performance are contributing to increased customer satisfaction and repeat purchases,” he says.

Roberts also acknowledges that part of the draw for using HarvestHold is its ease of use. He says the investment in adding HarvestHold is beneficial, based on what he’s seen from an improvement in quality and a reduction in shrink. He says the cost is minimal compared to the potential benefits of implementation.

“It’s easy to implement, cost-effective and doesn’t involve applying anything directly to the product; it’s simply a sheet placed in the box,” he says. “At the end of the day, it helps reduce waste, saves customers money and supports our mission of helping families enjoy fresh, healthy fruits and vegetables.”

Collaborative Supply Chain Blueprint

Roberts says that the reduction in food waste and keeping fresh produce out of landfills were key factors in adding HarvestHold technology. He says he also sees increased quality as an improved experience for the shopper.

“If a customer takes broccoli home and it lasts longer and maintains its quality, that creates a better overall experience,” he says. “That’s a win for the customer, a win for Harps and a win for reducing food waste. Those kinds of improvements can set us apart in a meaningful way.”

He says improving quality, reducing waste and improving customer satisfaction all contribute to the value customers see in the Harps brand, which in turn strengthens the financial performance and the company’s employee ownership.

Roberts says he’s deployed HarvestHold on Southern peaches successfully the past few seasons and is already looking ahead to the potential that HarvestHold might have in other commodities.

“Leafy greens would be at the top of the list, given their sensitivity and high shrink potential,” he says. “Beyond that, berries present a significant opportunity due to their volume and perishability.”

Divert Secures Partnership With Mitsubishi to Scale Circular Infrastructure Across North America

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 19:40:24 GMT

Divert Inc., a circular economy company on a mission to prevent food from being wasted, has formed a strategic partnership with Mitsubishi Corp., serving as the lead investor in Divert’s Series C financing. This partnership is a first-of-its-kind model for the organics resource recovery industry, reflecting the demonstrated success of Divert’s commercially and operationally proven platform and elevating the company to a valuation of over $1 billion.

The partnership comes at a time when regulatory pressure, decarbonization goals, food supply chain inefficiencies and rising disposal and energy costs are continuing to converge, the company says. As demand accelerates for infrastructure that can recover value from food that can no longer be consumed, Mitsubishi’s expertise is expected to play a key role in supporting Divert’s continued growth.

As part of the partnership, Mitsubishi has made an equity investment in Divert and, in connection with that investment, has been granted preferred offtake rights for renewable natural gas. Together, Divert and Mitsubishi are also establishing a new pathway to bring the benefits of renewable natural gas into Japan and other global markets through Mitsubishi’s global energy platform.

“This partnership reflects the maturity of Divert’s platform and the value we deliver to customers every day,” says Ryan Begin, CEO and co-founder of Divert. “We have built a proven model that solves real operating challenges for food retailers and manufacturers and creates value through food donations, renewable energy production and nutrient recovery. MC [Mitsubishi Corp.] recognized Divert as a disciplined infrastructure platform with proven results, strong operating capability and a clear path to continued scale.”

Divert says its platform sits at the intersection of food, logistics, agriculture, energy and carbon markets, positioning the company to reduce waste at its source and maximize value from the material it receives. The company’s model supports major food retailers and manufacturers in achieving compliance, reducing waste and improving operational efficiency.

Mitsubishi leverages more than 50 years of expertise across energy markets to deliver solutions that support a stable energy supply and advance the transition to a carbon-neutral society. Given Mitsubishi’s experience in developing and operating gas-related businesses in the U.S., the partnership creates a strong foundation for collaboration and synergy with Divert, the company says.

“We are focused on building businesses that strengthen resource resilience, support stable energy supply and create long term value through practical decarbonization,” says Shinya Naka, senior vice president, division chief operating officer, Europe and Next-Generation Energy Division, Energy & Power Solution Group. “Divert has built a compelling platform at the convergence of food, energy and circularity. Its proven operating model, strong customer value proposition and ability to recover value from discarded resources made this a strategic opportunity for us.”

The partnership marks an important step not only for Divert but also for the broader organics resource recovery industry. By pairing strategic equity capital with renewable natural gas offtake, Divert and Mitsubishi aim to advance a new model for financing and scaling circular food system infrastructure — one that links source reduction, domestic energy production and decarbonization in a way that has not previously been executed at scale.

Divert is a portfolio company of Ara Partners, a global private equity, infrastructure and energy firm focused on decarbonizing the industrial economy.

Hannaford Transforms Fresh Produce Surplus Into a Regional Community Lifeline

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 19:07:20 GMT

For decades, the backrooms of grocery stores were often the final stop for produce that didn’t meet the beauty standards of the retail floor. But at Hannaford Supermarkets, those apples at the bottom of the stack or slightly bruised bell peppers aren’t seen as waste; they are seen as a vital resource for a hungry community.

In 2025, Hannaford reached a milestone by donating 29 million pounds of food across the Northeast, marking a 15% increase from previous years. While the numbers are impressive, the strategy behind them is even more precise. According to Ericka Dodge Katz, director of external communications and community impact for Hannaford, this achievement is the result of a highly sophisticated culling process designed to prioritize human health and environmental sustainability.

Art of the Cull: Prioritizing Produce

Unlike shelf-stable canned goods, fresh produce is a race against the clock. To manage this, Hannaford relies on the expertise of its fresh-trained associates.

“We don’t have someone from the center of the store culling the apples,” Dodge Katz says. “It’s the person who has taken stock and replenished that area. They understand the life cycle of a grape or an apple.”

These associates make daily judgment calls based on peak freshness. If a piece of produce is no longer top-shelf for sale but remains nutritionally excellent, it is diverted to the Fresh Rescue program. To maintain quality, Hannaford has implemented specific operational protocols:

Dedicated cooling zones — Rescued produce doesn’t sit on a loading dock. It is moved to a dedicated climate-controlled space in the back of the store.
Direct transition — Produce stays in these cooling areas until the moment a local pantry partner arrives for pickup, ensuring the cold chain remains intact.

Hannaford’s strategy is rooted in the EPA Food Recovery Hierarchy, a mental map shared by associates across all 188 stores. The priority is clear:

Feed hungry people — The vast majority of sorted produce goes to Hannaford’s network of over 450 local pantry partners.
Feed animals — For produce that has crossed the line of human consumption, Hannaford partners with local livestock and pig farmers.
Industrial diversion — If the food isn’t fit for a farm, it heads to a bio-digester.

Associates make daily judgment calls based on peak freshness. If a piece of produce is no longer top shelf for sale but remains nutritionally excellent, it is diverted to the Fresh Rescue program.

(Photo courtesy of Hannaford)

This rigorous adherence to the hierarchy allowed Hannaford to achieve zero food waste to landfill as early as 2019. By partnering with companies like Agricycle, it closed the last-mile gap, ensuring that even the scraps contribute to renewable energy rather than methane emissions in a landfill.

Perhaps the most significant recent innovation is how Hannaford is streamlining its partnership with regional food banks. Historically, some items would take a tour of New England — traveling from a store to a recovery center in Maine to be scanned, only to be shipped back to a food bank in Vermont or New York.

Hannaford is now piloting a program to bypass this long-haul logistics model. By processing more items at the store level, it can bundle center-store goods with fresh produce for immediate pickup by local pantries.

“It’s happening faster, and it’s also reducing mileage and spoilage,” Dodge Katz says. “It’s getting food into the community faster because it’s not taking this little tour to get there.”

Culture of Uncommon Care

For Hannaford, this is a legacy that dates back to the 1880s. Whether it’s an apple going to a local family or a bruised pear going to a neighborhood pig farmer, there is a palpable sense of pride among the staff, she says.

In an industry where perfect is often the enemy of the good, Hannaford has proven that with the right operational precision and a deep-rooted commitment to community, the retail floor can be a powerful engine for feeding the hungry and protecting the planet.

Chef Molly Dwyer on Seasonality, Sustainability, and Running the 130th Boston Marathon

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:39:21 GMT

Molly Dwyer is a prominent figure in the Boston culinary scene, currently serving as chef de cuisine at Bar Volpe, a Southern Italian-inspired, wood-fired restaurant in South Boston helmed by James Beard Award winner Karen Akunowicz. In 2024, Dwyer was honored as a StarChefs Boston Rising Star. While Dwyer is passionate about food, sustainability and community, she is also an avid runner, who has completed marathons and ultramarathons.

She’s running the 130th Boston Marathon in support of Spoonfuls . This will be her fourth marathon and second in Boston.

“Once you run it, once I feel like you get the bug and want to run it every year, if you can,” she says.

Dwyer says Akunowicz has been a major supporter of Spoonfuls and she, too, has participated in events for the organization that involve the restaurant industry.

“Those were always just the best and most fun events to be at,” she says. “Because not only was it a great cause to be able to give my time to, but those events are always such a community event for the restaurant industry. That was a great place to be able to meet a lot of people for a great cause.”

So, how does Dwyer balance a demanding career with marathon and ultramarathon training? She says it takes both planning and flexibility.

“The biggest part of my job is you think you know what’s going to happen, and you plan the best you can for it, but then something will go sideways,” she says. “I try and lay out how I want to fit everything in at the beginning of the week, and sometimes it takes getting creative.”

She says she’ll fit in runs before work, after work and sometimes to and from work when training for ultramarathons. She says one of her cooks asked her recently, “When do you run, chef? Why do you do this?” “The biggest thing I can say is, if you want to do it, go make the time,” Dwyer says.

And of course, being both a marathoner and a chef, fresh produce plays a huge role for Dwyer. She says menus will change based on seasonal availability.

“Being able to figure out what are the things that we need to use this season, and what’s going to make us excited, and what’s going to be an awesome representation of the seasons on the plate — that produce drives my creative process,” she says.

And that seasonality is something she tries to instill in her cooks. She says she tries to coach them on her mantra of using what’s in season to drive the menus.

“Just because tomatoes are available at any point in the year, that doesn’t mean we’re going to have a tomato salad on the menu,” she says. “Because while those tomatoes are fine, it’s not going to be like an awesome expression of the season and the dish that we want to put out.”

While training, she says she likes to make huge batches of sauteed vegetables and pair them with rice and beef for meal prep, and she carries that seasonality into her vegetables of choice.

Dwyer says she’s excited to run Boston again for such a meaningful cause.

“Every day my job is to feed people, and I feel like we in restaurants probably take for granted how much food we have around us at all times,” she says. “As people who work in the service industry, especially, we realize that we are truly blessed to have that. But also, how can we do that for somebody else? It is super important. I’m super grateful to have the opportunity to raise the money and make sure that other people are also fed.”

Spoonfuls Runner Harvests a New Family Milestone

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:44:06 GMT

Registered dietitian Michelle Piro will run the 130th Boston Marathon in support of Spoonfuls . She says running for a charity with such a connection to her professional life makes this experience much more meaningful.

But her Boston Marathon roots go much deeper. Her grandfather, Jerry, qualified and competed in the historic race 25 times and ran the 100th Boston Marathon.

“I’ve always wanted to run the Boston Marathon,” she says. “It’s been a dream of mine forever.”

Piro says that as a registered dietitian who studied nutrition and health promotion, she has always been passionate about food.

“The fact that they really reduce food waste and help fight insecurity as well within that process just really stood out to me,” she says.

As part of the team raising money for Spoonfuls, Piro got a chance to ride along with the Spoonfuls team and learn more about the work they do.

“That was a really cool experience,” she says. “Just to see how much they really do acquire and how much it’s so needed with the different organizations that they drop it off at.”

Piro says with such a deep family connection to the Boston Marathon, she knew she wanted it to be her first marathon. She says she grew up with stories of how her grandfather started running in his 40s and 50s, so this moment is full circle for her and her family.

“I was also born in 1996, and it is 30 years from when he ran,” she says. “I thought that was kind of a cool tie as well. It’s also running in memory of them.”

While her grandfather died in 2020 and her grandmother passed away last August, Piro has some of her grandfather’s mementos to help inspire her training.

“I have a lot of his old Boston memorabilia, old Boston T-shirts and jackets,” she says. “He ran the 100th marathon, Boston Marathon, so I have his old medal in my desk drawer,” she says. “It’s just so cool being able to come full circle and listening to those stories growing up and be able to do that now this year, especially on an anniversary year, I feel like it’s such a cool opportunity.”

As a Boston native, she says training has been going well, and she had a good foundation of running as she went into the training cycle. She says she’s also got a leg up as a dietitian as well, with the right foods and hydration.

And this means a lot of fresh produce. Piro says she enjoys mixing up and eating seasonally.

“Recently I’ve been utilizing a lot of citrus fruits, lots of oranges, especially a good snack or a refreshing thing to add to my meal after a run, or just in general,” she says. “Lots of oranges, lots of bananas. I feel like that’s a big part of training.”

Piro says she’s also eating a lot of apples, especially Cosmic Crisp, which she says she’ll eat as a snack and add to breakfast.

Vegetables, including squash and potatoes for carbohydrates, also play a key role in fueling her training.

“I also love a good fresh salad,” she says. “I’ll do a lot of different fun salads depending on the week and what I’m in the mood for. And that way, I’ll add a lot of different extra chopped veggies depending, too, on what’s on sale or what’s in season. I really emphasize any variety of different things. I feel like there’s no shortage of opportunities to get more produce in.”

Piro says she’s excited to continue her family’s legacy with the Boston Marathon and that being a part of Team Spoonfuls has made her first marathon more meaningful.

“Running for an organization that I just have the utmost respect for and something that I’m so passionate about with public health promotion and food access — I feel like it’s just the perfect storm,” she says.

Report Shows U.S. Food Waste at Historic Low, Driven by Households

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:59:52 GMT

Progress on the Plate: 2026 ReFED U.S. Food Waste Report marks a turning point in the movement to reduce food waste, revealing the first year-to-year reduction in surplus food since COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, total surplus food in the United States decreased to 70 million tons, a 2.2% reduction from the previous year, or a 3.7% decrease per capita. While this represents a significant milestone, nearly one-third of U.S. food supply (29%) still goes unsold or uneaten.

The new report from ReFED includes key statistics, insights, barriers and points of progress on the issue, to help professionals and communities alike understand the current state of the food waste challenge and how to meaningfully address it.

“This is an opportune moment to focus on wasting less food,” says Dana Gunders, president of ReFED. “With higher food prices, Americans are looking for ways to extend their grocery dollars. Using up more of what they’re already purchasing and wasting less is proving to be one of the most accessible ways to do it. At the same time, food waste reduction is recognized as a business decision with material impact on the bottom line for food businesses, which are elevating the issue to the C-suite and boardroom. The wind is at our backs, and it’s time to step on the gas.”

The amount of surplus food according to ReFED’s Progress on the Plate: 2026 U.S. Food Waste Report.

(Image courtesy of ReFED)

Fresh Produce Waste: A Persistent Challenge

Fresh produce remains the most wasted food type in the United States, accounting for 45.4% of all surplus food. Despite overall reductions in food waste, fresh fruit has been particularly difficult to manage and did not see the same waste reductions as more “visible” everyday items like milk.

To bridge the national results with specific industry trends, the following sections examine how fresh produce waste is currently being addressed across the farm, retail and consumer sectors:

1. At the Farm Level (24.2% of Surplus)
Farms are the second largest source of surplus food, contributing 24.2% of the total. Much of this waste is driven by systemic factors:

Harvesting: Approximately 19.9% of total surplus food across the supply chain is never harvested.
Buyer rejections: Strict aesthetic standards lead to “buyer rejections,” which account for 2.2% of surplus food.
Emerging solutions: Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement is increasing the appeal of imperfect produce, which can be diverted from landfills and sold at a discount to improve both nutrition and affordability.

2. In the Retail Sector (5.7% of Surplus)
While retail accounts for a smaller percentage of total surplus (5.7%), it represents a significant financial opportunity.

Efficiency gains: Grocery retailers saw a 1.1% decrease in their “Unsold Food Rate” between 2023 and 2024.
Financial impact: Surplus food in the retail sector was valued at $26.9 billion in 2024.
Policy and AI: Standardizing date labels through the proposed federal Food Date Labeling Act could save retailers $253 million annually through better inventory management. Additionally, AI-enhanced demand-planning tools are helping retailers right-size orders and improve yield.

3. Consumer Waste (33.5% of Surplus)
Residential waste is the leading driver of surplus food, but it also showed the most progress in 2024 with a 950,000-ton reduction.

Economic drivers: High food prices have forced consumers to adopt better food management practices, such as meal planning (72%), checking inventory before shopping (87%) and eating leftovers (76%).
The produce gap: Consumers are more effective at managing prepared foods, but struggle with fresh produce, which often goes to waste because it is “harder to manage.”
Financial burden: On average, individual consumers spend $762 per year on food that eventually goes to waste.

Looking Forward: The Path to 2030

The report identifies 47 solutions — including centralized composting, upcycling and portion size customization — that could reduce food waste by 20 million tons annually if fully implemented. By focusing on inventory visibility and behavioral change, U.S. aims to maintain this momentum to meet the goal of halving food waste by 2030.

To read the full report, click here .

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Kroger and Flashfood Take Waste-Reduction Partnership Divisionwide Across the Mid-Atlantic

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 20:06:23 GMT

Flashfood’s mission to tackle food insecurity and waste has reached a major milestone as its platform goes live across Kroger’s entire Mid-Atlantic Division.

Following a successful rollout in 16 Richmond-area stores last summer that saved shoppers nearly $700,000, keeping over 290,000 pounds of food out of landfills, the rollout now provides residents in Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky access to affordable, high-quality groceries at more than 100 locations, according to the companies.

“From the start, our Richmond customers have embraced Flashfood,” says Kate Mora, president of Kroger Mid-Atlantic. “The expansion throughout our Mid-Atlantic Division is a natural next step. This will give more shoppers the opportunity to save on groceries while ensuring less good food ends up in landfills, bringing our Zero Hunger, Zero Waste commitment to life in a meaningful way.”

“In a short amount of time, the impact Kroger and Flashfood have been able to accomplish for their local communities — improving access to affordable, healthy food — is something I’m incredibly proud of,” says Flashfood CEO Jordan Schenck. “Together, we’re building a modern, data-driven shrink management system that supports Kroger’s waste reduction goals while helping more families access the food they need.”

Bridging the Gap Between Health and Affordability

As part of a collective effort to advance food-as-medicine initiatives, Kroger Health and Flashfood are placing affordability at the center of the nutrition conversation. In a 2025 survey, 70% of Flashfood shoppers reported a healthier diet since using Flashfood, according to a news release.

As Flashfood expands across the Mid-Atlantic Division, Kroger Health and Flashfood will offer a series of free virtual nutrition classes for Kroger shoppers. The classes will share tips for preparing easy, healthy meals on a budget and making the most of fresh ingredients found on Flashfood.

“Our team is always looking for ways to make healthier choices the easy choice for our shoppers, and Flashfood helps make those options both accessible and affordable,” says Laura Brown, director of nutrition for Kroger Health. “Through these nutrition classes, we hope to make healthy living more approachable while showcasing the wide variety of nutritious options available in our stores.”

With this expansion, Flashfood says it continues to scale as a trusted grocery technology partner for major retailers across North America. Flashfood is now available in more than 2,000 grocery stores, helping shoppers save hundreds of millions of dollars on groceries while keeping millions of pounds of food out of landfills.

Strategic Shelf Placement: A No-Tech Key to Less Produce Waste

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 21:01:21 GMT

For produce managers staring down the barrel of daily shrink, the solution to better margins might not be a shiny new artificial intelligence platform or a shift in consumer behavior. According to a new study in the journal Management Science, published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, or INFORMS, the secret lies in two variables already under a retailer’s thumb: shelf placement and discount timing.

The research, “Displaying and Discounting Perishables: Impact on Retail Profits and Waste,” suggests that by optimizing how items are displayed and when they are marked down, grocery retailers can slash food waste by an average of 21.24% while simultaneously boosting profits by 6.01%.

The new study takes a close look at perishables with declining quality over time, such as fresh produce, dairy and meat. Using advanced analytical modeling and thousands of simulated retail scenarios, the researchers examined how three factors interact: product display, discount timing and discount depth.

Complexity of the Produce Department

The findings arrive at a critical time for the industry, as retailers face increasing pressure to balance sustainability with a tightening bottom line.

“Fresh produce and other perishables are among the toughest categories for grocers to manage because quality declines every day,” says Zumbul Atan, co-author of the study. “Our research shows that retailers don’t have to invest in new technology or wait for consumers to change their behavior; simple changes to where items sit on the shelf and when discounts are offered can reduce food waste by more than 20% while still boosting profits.”

Power of the ‘First Touch’

The study used advanced analytical modeling to simulate thousands of retail scenarios, testing how product display, discount timing and discount depth interact to move inventory. The researchers found that “first-touch” visibility — making older, soon-to-expire items the easiest for a shopper to grab — is a major driver of sell-through.

“When older products are made easier to reach and paired with appropriately timed discounts, customers are much more likely to buy them before they spoil,” says Dorothee Honhon, a co-author of the study. “This isn’t about fancy technology or gimmicks. It’s about using placement and pricing together to move inventory more efficiently and cut down on unsold waste.”

Win-Win for the Bottom Line

The research challenges a traditional freshness-at-all-costs mantra, which often assumes that hiding older stock is the only way to protect a brand. Instead, the data suggests that a more transparent, strategic approach to the shelf can satisfy both the chief financial officer and the sustainability officer.

“What makes these results exciting for produce departments is that profit and sustainability goals don’t have to be in conflict,” says Amy Pan, another of the study’s co-authors. “By redesigning shelf strategies with consumer purchasing behavior and product characteristics in mind, stores can reduce spoilage and disposal costs while giving customers better prices and helping the environment.”

Scalable Solutions for Every Store Size

Perhaps most surprising is what the research says about “everyday low price” retailers, such as Walmart, that avoid discounting altogether. Even without changing prices, simply adjusting how products are displayed can reduce waste and improve profitability when customer traffic is unpredictable, which is the reality for most stores.

“One of the big surprises from our research is how much impact small operational decisions — things retailers already control — can have on both waste and revenue,” Pan says. “Whether you’re a small independent or a large chain, adjusting your shelf and discount strategy can deliver measurable gains in terms of profit and waste reduction.”

Tackling Produce Waste: Retail Strategies and the Path to 2030

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 19:06:37 GMT

Food waste remains one of the most significant challenges in the retail sector, particularly within the produce department.

According to ReFED’s Food Waste Monitor , 70.7 million tons of surplus food were generated in all sectors across all states in 2024. Of this, produce represented 32.1 million tons, or 45.3%. To combat this, retailers are increasingly turning to innovative technology and collaborative pacts to recover value and reduce environmental impact.

Too Good To Go: Turning Surplus into Opportunity

Too Good To Go has emerged as a solution for retailers looking to mitigate the loss of surplus food. By using its Surprise Bag model, the platform allows retailers to sell items that are nearing their best-before date — especially highly perishable produce — at a discounted price to consumers.

Too Good To Go’s new white paper, “ Retail’s $348B Problem, ” examines the scale of surplus-driven revenue loss in U.S. grocery and why food waste is shifting from an operational concern to a material profitability question.

The company says the environmental and operational impact of this model is measurable:

Emissions and resources — Across the U.S., unsold or uneaten food is responsible for 24% of landfill inputs and 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Retail reach — In 2024 alone, the Too Good To Go community saved over 135 million meals. Major retailers, including Whole Foods Market, have integrated this system to manage daily inventory fluctuations that would otherwise result in shrink.
Financial recovery — Beyond sustainability, the platform enables retailers to recover the wholesale cost of goods that would otherwise represent a total loss, creating a “win-win-win” for the business, the consumer and the planet, according to the company.
Since its launch in the U.S. in 2020, Too Good To Go says it has helped its network of partners recover an extra $139.8 million in added revenue.

The practical application of these surplus-reduction strategies is best illustrated through the direct insights and data provided by Whole Foods Market and Pemberton Farms, the company says, showcasing how both national and local retailers are navigating the operational challenges of produce waste.

Pemberton Farms , Boston
By the numbers:

Pemberton Farms has earned $47,659 in recovered revenue since partnering with Too Good To Go.
That revenue is a direct result of the 12,280-plus meals it has saved from going to waste through the Too Good To Go app; this can include everything from prepared foods and bakery items to bags stocked with produce that might not be as pretty but is still perfectly good.
The store has had an 87% return rate among new shoppers who have visited the store for the first time through Too Good To Go.

“Too Good To Go has done so many other things for our business that we never could have put a metric on in the beginning,” says Greg Saidnawey, store manager for Pemberton Farms. “One of the biggest things is just how much foot traffic gets pushed into the store. And once people are in here, we pride ourselves on being the kind of place where the whole store becomes an impulse buy.”

Whole Foods Market , multiple locations
By the numbers:

Whole Foods Market initially piloted its collaboration with Too Good To Go in 2023, launching two Too Good To Go Surprise Bag product categories across seven store locations.
Following a successful pilot, the program expanded in 2024 to more than 430 stores, and within six months, it scaled nationwide to all 530-plus locations.
After demonstrating consistent operational success at the national level, Whole Foods Market further deepened the collaboration by introducing seven additional product categories across more than 530 stores. The expansion significantly increased its food surplus recovery, aided its goals of cutting food waste in half by 2030 and further embedded waste reduction into everyday store operations.

“We believe every effort to reduce food waste is an opportunity to make a difference as part of our purpose to nourish people and the planet,” says Caitlin Leibert, vice president of sustainability for Whole Foods Market. “Expanding our collaboration with Too Good To Go into even more departments is a simple yet powerful way to bring value to our customers and communities while helping build a more sustainable food future, one meal at a time.”

The U.S. Food Waste Pact: Industrywide Progress

While individual platforms like Too Good To Go address immediate surplus, the U.S. Food Waste Pact focuses on systemic change through data transparency and collective action. The 2025 Impact Report highlights a pivotal shift in how the retail industry manages its supply chain.

Key findings from the Pact’s retail signatories include:

Reduction in unsold food — Retailers participating in the pact reported a 1.1% decrease in unsold food rates from 2023 to 2024. This improvement is particularly notable as it occurred despite an overall increase in the total volume of food handled by these businesses.
Economic gains — This reduction in waste translated to a $15.9 million decrease in the wholesale cost of surplus food, proving that efficiency in the produce aisle directly bolsters the bottom line.
Collaborative scale — The pact has nearly doubled its signatory base, now including major players such as Aldi US, Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market.
Pilot success — Targeted pilot projects within the pact have demonstrated that focused interventions can lead to waste reductions of over 50% in specific categories, providing a roadmap for broader implementation across the retail landscape.

Through the combination of consumer-facing apps and rigorous industrywide reporting, the retail sector is moving closer to the national goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030.

How General Produce and Divert are Powering California With Food Waste

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 22:43:25 GMT

In a step toward building a circular economy in northern California, Divert Inc. and General Produce have partnered to transform unsalable food waste into renewable energy and soil amendments.

This collaboration focuses on General Produce’s Sacramento-area distribution center, where the company aggregates harvested commodities from local growers for warehousing and distribution throughout the region.

The partnership targets organic materials that cannot be sold or donated , such as finished goods that are fully packaged and palletized but have reached expiration and bulk binned materials such as damaged pumpkins or bruised produce. By redirecting this material to Divert’s Integrated Diversion abd Energy Facility in Turlock, Calif., General Produce ensures even damaged or recalled goods are repurposed rather than sent to a landfill.

The Science of Transformation

The process at the Turlock facility follows a specialized multistep system designed for maximum efficiency. Andrew Johnston, vice president and general manager of industrials for Divert, says that the facility operates along these process steps:

Collection and transport: Divert loads pallets of finished goods and bulk bins of produce such as damaged pumpkins or bruised fruit, onto trailers at the General Produce facility
Identification and weighing: Upon arrival at the Turlock facility, every pallet and bin is inspected to identify the specific commodity (e.g., cabbage, berries or leafy greens) and weighed to record its packaging level and mass
Mechanical depackaging: The materials run through a specialized system that gently separates any plastic, cardboard or branded packaging from the organic food matter
Anaerobic digestion: The clean organics flow into a closed “stomach” where helpful bacteria break down the material to create biogas
Refining and extraction: The biogas is cleaned to become renewable natural gas, while a centrifuge separates the remaining solids to be repurposed as soil amendment

Beyond the physical processing of waste, a critical component of the partnership is the “visibility into the data,” Johnston says. Divert tracks the type, packaging level and weight of every pallet and bin received. This granular reporting allows General Produce to monitor CO₂ reductions and identify specific inefficiencies within their supply chain.

“The visibility into the data is a huge piece of this,” Johnston says, adding that this information supports internal sustainability initiatives and mandatory reporting. This data-centric approach is vital for meeting the requirements of California’s Senate Bill 1383 (SB 1383), which mandates the diversion of organic waste from landfills to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Together with Divert, we’re keeping organic waste out of landfills, transforming what can’t be donated into renewable energy and continuing to drive meaningful change across our industry,” says Brian Hamilton, director of operations for General Produce.

As Divert continues to expand its Industrials Group, Johnston says their mandate now spans the entire food value chain, “which starts at the farm.” This includes everything from domestic logistics and marine terminals to food processing and distribution.

“Our partnership with General Produce builds on the work we are doing across California to eliminate wasted food in the state and reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the food value chain,” Johnston says. By securing the destruction of recalled or unsalable goods while generating carbon-negative energy, the collaboration exemplifies a “smarter, cleaner and more responsible supply chain.”

Black Soldier Fly Bioreactors Turn Food Waste into Plant Protection and Farm Resources

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 19:34:08 GMT

What if food waste wasn’t something to get rid of but a resource waiting to be tapped? Researchers at University of California, Riverside are exploring whether a small, insect-powered system could help growers close the loop, turning everyday scraps into new biological tools that support healthier plants, stronger soils and more self-reliant farms.

Black soldier fly bioreactors are gaining attention as a promising way to turn waste into resources, creating feed for poultry and fish, while also producing frass that could help strengthen plant defenses. For specialty crop growers and urban farmers, the research carries particular relevance.

Professor Kerry Mauck has been studying how black soldier fly systems influence plants, and one of the most intriguing concepts is what she describes as a “vaccine-like” effect. Insects, fungi and other organisms that commonly interact with plants contain chitin, a structural polymer. When tiny fragments of chitin from the insects’ exoskeletons show up in soil, plants recognize the signal.

Mauck explains that the bits of chitin become “a molecular signature of something that the plant might want to ramp up its defenses to fight off.” Because frass contains both chitin and microbes that help break it down into smaller pieces, plants can respond as if they are preparing for attack, thus switching on natural defense systems before any threat arrives.

“It’s like activating those defenses without the attack that comes right after,” Mauck says. “If something else does come in, the plant is ready for it.”

Black soldier fly adults sunning themselves on the walls of the greenhouse housing the bioreactor.

(Photo courtesy of Mauck Lab BSF Team)

Built With Small and Specialty Growers in Mind

While large commercial systems exist, Mauck’s team intentionally designed a small, adaptable setup.

“Ours is one of the first that’s been tested and published that would operate on a small scale,” she says. The goal was to make it feasible for small and medium-sized farms and growers with limited space. The main requirement is an enclosed area with some temperature control — such as a greenhouse or a simple building with windows.

The footprint can be as modest as a single bin, roughly a meter and a half square, but growers can add additional bins in a row as their operation grows. Importantly, most of the materials are common agricultural supplies.

“The bins are like bins you might use to harvest fruit,” she says, noting buckets, shovels and hardware-store materials made up most of the system’s needs.

Urban farmers might find the flexibility attractive, although Mauck cautions that community gardens could face coordination challenges around who maintains the system week-to-week. In the university trial, undergraduate workers were able to keep the system running with about five to 10 hours per week of labor.

BSF larvae eating food waste from the UCR dining hall.

(Photo courtesy of Mauck Lab BSF Team)

Beyond Feed: Soil Biology and Plant Resilience

Beyond producing feed for poultry and fish, Mauck sees some of the greatest potential benefits happening underground.

The chitin and organic matter appear to encourage beneficial bacteria that help keep soil-borne pathogens in check.

“The other great thing about the materials that are in the frass … is that a lot of microbes that are beneficial, that can actually suppress diseases in the soil, thrive on these materials,” she says.

Her team is now exploring whether even small doses of frass could build healthier soil ecosystems while keeping application costs low.

“We’re trying to see what’s the smallest dose … that can still be effective,” Mauck says.

For specialty crop farms, the research suggests several takeaways:

Closed-loop opportunity: Waste streams can become feed and soil amendments instead of disposal costs
Plant-defense potential: Frass might “prime” crops to better respond to pests and disease
Scalable design: Systems can start small and expand
Labor remains a factor: Clear responsibilities and training are essential, especially in shared garden settings

As scientists learn more about how frass shapes soil biology and plant defenses, this insect-powered approach could become one of the simplest ways to close the loop on nutrients.

Whole Foods Market to Pilot Food Waste Tech for Back-of-House Produce Scraps

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 20:10:26 GMT

Whole Foods Market is set to tackle how the grocery industry handles organic waste through a new collaboration with Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and the technology firm, Mill Industries Inc.

Starting in 2027, the retailer will deploy Mill Commercial , an automated, high-capacity infrastructure designed to process fruit and vegetable scraps directly within back-of-house operations. The artificial intelligence-powered system dehydrates produce waste on-site, converting it into a nutrient-rich chicken feed ingredient for the grocer’s private-label egg suppliers to create a closed-loop supply chain.

According to a news release, this initiative marks the grocery industry’s first on-site food waste conversion technology, enabling food waste to be converted into chicken feed in store before sending to suppliers for closed-loop opportunities. Mill says it sets an ambitious standard for the grocery industry by transforming food scraps once considered waste into a new, valuable feedstock. The collaboration creates value at every stage in Whole Foods Market’s operations from suppliers to customers, according to the release.

Mill Commercial will precisely and automatically measure and characterize the fruit and vegetable scraps, helping to enable smarter inventory decisions and optimized ordering patterns, the company says. Its advanced dehydration process can also reduce waste volumes by up to 80%, simplifying Whole Foods Market’s operational handling requirements, significantly lowering transportation costs and enhancing food safety. The resulting high-quality, cost-effective feed ingredient aims to provide stability to Whole Foods Market suppliers and reduce price volatility for customers.

“We’re excited to collaborate with Mill on its innovative commercial scale technology that will help us reduce food waste and operate more efficiently,” says Jason Buechel, vice president of Amazon Worldwide Grocery Stores and CEO of Whole Foods Market. “This first-of-its-kind collaboration enables us to minimize waste while building a more circular supply chain that benefits our customers, communities and environment.”

Building on the success of its residential food recycler, Mill says it will bring its technology to the commercial sector. Like the residential product, Mill’s larger-scale device grinds and dehydrates food scraps, transforming them into what the company says are dry, odorless and shelf-stable food grounds. The output can be used for a number of different applications.

Mill says its commercial system also enables significant reductions in hauling and infrastructure costs over time, and is expected to cut carbon emissions associated with food waste management.

The company says Mill Commercial brings advanced AI capabilities into the physical realm of grocery and food service businesses. Mill’s approach uses AI to track and measure food waste in real time to identify what’s being thrown away, how much and how best to reuse the resource. Mill Commercial adds that it empowers businesses to get smarter on their food supplies and operations, providing insights and opportunities for improvements and efficiencies.

“Until now, there has been no advanced technology solution to tackle the problem of food waste at commercial scale,” says Matt Rogers, co-founder and CEO of Mill. “With Mill Commercial, we are combining our innovative hardware with data and insights powered by AI to make it easier to dramatically reduce food waste in the grocery sector and beyond, turning what was ‘waste’ into a resource we can use. Our approach will deliver significant operational and financial benefits, not just environmental ones. This collaboration with Amazon will set a new standard for the industry, and we are excited to launch Mill Commercial with a trailblazing and mission-driven brand like Whole Foods Market.”

“Utilizing Mill’s intelligent, connected and distributed infrastructure helps customers reduce food waste, scale a more circular supply chain and achieve greater operational efficiency,” adds Thomas Selby, investor at the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund. “We’ve been following Mill since inception and are thrilled to invest now to support the development and deployment of their commercial technology at Whole Foods Market and beyond.”

Rethinking Shrink: Divert Helps Produce Departments Do More With Unsold Food

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:56:11 GMT

For produce departments, shrink has long been viewed as an unavoidable cost of doing business. Highly perishable items, strict quality standards and fast inventory turns make some level of unsold product inevitable. But retailers are increasingly rethinking what happens to that food once it leaves the sales floor, and companies like Divert are helping make unsold produce more visible, manageable and impactful.

Divert works with more than 7,800 retail locations across the U.S., partnering with grocers to keep food out of landfills while prioritizing donation and recovery opportunities whenever possible, according to Teresa von Fuchs, vice president and general manager of retail for Divert.

“One of the things that we think is really beneficial is obviously getting food out of the landfill,” von Fuchs says. “But even more important than getting it out of the landfill is making sure it goes to feed people.”

Historically, unsold food management has been something of a black box for retailers, von Fuchs says. Produce is culled throughout the day, but the data behind what’s removed, why it’s removed and where it ultimately goes has often been fragmented or difficult to track, she says.

Divert’s in-store solution is designed to change that by making food waste highly visible and easy for associates to manage in the back room. Perishable items from any department, including produce, are placed into Divert bins, creating a centralized system that simplifies disposition decisions while capturing store-level data.

Because the system is easy to use, von Fuchs says retailers often see immediate improvements in overall waste reduction not just in diversion. When associates understand where unsold produce goes and why, they’re more intentional about culling and donation practices.

Divert’s Integrated Diversion & Energy Facility in Turlock, CA, opened in 2024.

(Photo courtesy of Divert)

“It becomes a training tool,” she says. “You can work with all your department leaders and all store associates to make sure that they’re very aware of donation guidelines.”

High employee turnover remains one of the biggest challenges to successful donation and diversion programs, von Fuchs says, particularly in produce departments where staffing changes are frequent.

“The first mandate for all retailers is to sell as much food as possible,” von Fuchs says. “But you’ve got 50% of the staff that turns over every six months, and so you’re looking at constant retraining.”

Divert works with retailers to integrate donation and diversion into everyday workflows rather than treating it as a separate program. In produce, that often means embedding disposition decisions directly into the culling process.

“When you’re taking things off the shelf, it shouldn’t be multiple points of decision,” von Fuchs says. “If it’s donatable, it needs to go as directly as possible toward the donation stream. The more times you touch a product for sorting, the more of it is going to end up not in the places you want it to be.”

Other common barriers include inconsistent pickup schedules, unclear staging areas that don’t support cold chain requirements and lingering misconceptions about food safety liability. Von Fuchs says myths around donation risk persist, even though federal protections have been in place for years.

“A lot of it is myth-busting, operational execution focus and helping stores see that this isn’t just the program of the month,” she says.

Inedible, unsold food on its journey through Divert’s Integrated Diversion & Energy Facility in Turlock, Calif.

(Photo courtesy of Divert)

Case Studies and Measurable Results

In one case study conducted by Divert, Safeway increased food donations by 20% in just three months after implementing Divert’s optimization solution. According to von Fuchs, Divert assigns a dedicated team to work with individual stores, identifying specific barriers and coaching teams on how to unlock more donation opportunities

Since 2018, the company says Divert has facilitated the donation of 15.7 million pounds of food.

Beyond donation, Divert also provides retailers with highly granular data at the store and department level. That information can be analyzed alongside sales and inventory data to pinpoint where additional markdowns, merchandising changes or training support might be needed.

“You’re not trying to blast 100 stores with the same message,” von Fuchs says. “You can see that maybe these 10 stores need more on-the-ground handholding.”

From Unsold Produce to Renewable Energy

When food can’t be donated or sold, Divert ensures it still delivers value. Unsold food collected in stores is sent through distribution centers and consolidated at Divert facilities, where it’s processed into renewable natural gas.

“We capture all the data around it at a store level, and then we turn that unsold food into renewable natural gas,” von Fuchs says. “Homes are powered in areas by the grocery stores that serve that same area.”

For retailers, this closed-loop approach helps align sustainability goals with local community impact, particularly in regions where food waste diversion supports nearby energy infrastructure, she says.

Von Fuchs sees the future of food waste management shifting away from simply reducing trash toward managing unsold food as a category — one that intersects with sales, donations and customer engagement.

“There’s a lot of opportunity, especially in economically uncertain times, to make sure more surplus food gets sold out the front door, goes to feeding people or is recovered in other meaningful ways,” she says.

For produce departments, that mindset reframes shrink as a source of insight rather than just a loss. With better data, clearer processes and stronger associate engagement, von Fuchs says retailers can reduce waste while increasing both operational efficiency and community impact.

Your Next Read: Divert and General Produce Partner to Transform Non-Donatable Food to Renewable Energy, Soil Amendment

Driving Change from Farm to Fork: How the U.S. Food Waste Pact Unites Growers and Retailers to Reduce Waste

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 22:35:49 GMT

When Jackie Suggitt, vice president of business initiatives and community engagement for the U.S. Food Waste Pact , describes the pact’s methodology, she begins with its backbone: target, measure, act.

“The order is really important,” Suggitt says. “You don’t want to jump straight from target to act without the measurement to guide the action.”

Only when a business commits, measures and reports its food waste can the pact “take that data and do something with it to actually reduce food waste.”

That philosophy — data first, action second — is shaping how retailers and growers collaborate today, especially in the specialty-crop supply chain. Few examples illustrate that impact more clearly than the pact’s strawberry whole-chain pilot, detailed in the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment strawberry case study.

Shining a Light on Hidden Losses: The Strawberry Case Study

Fresh strawberries represent one of the most waste-vulnerable crops in the U.S. supply chain, Suggitt says: fragile, highly perishable and grown at massive scale.

The pact’s strawberry pilot followed fruit from farm to retail across two seasons, and the results were eye-opening:

Thirty-six percent of mature strawberries were left unharvested, often due to leaf cover, labor pressure or retailer specifications.
At retail, about 9% of strawberries went unsold because of shelf-life issues, quality standards or demand planning.

For Suggitt, this is exactly why the pact exists.

“We went and said, ‘Let’s go look everywhere, from farm to retail. What the heck is happening with strawberries? Where are they going to waste and why?’” she says. “Phase 1 is all about highlighting hot spots.”

Those hot spots became the starting point for real change.

Influencing Farming Practices: Turning Unharvested Fruit Into Value

Historically, unharvested strawberries were seen as an unavoidable loss. Growers focused on marketable fruit, and without data, many didn’t realize how much edible product was being left behind.

“The power in that is no one of those individual stakeholders could have solved that problem on their own,” Suggitt says. “It had to be the grower and the broker and the buyer all coming to terms on a new market strategy.”

In the strawberry pilot:

Growers began monitoring in-field losses, recognizing edible fruit they had never counted before.
Bulk harvesting and secondary-market sorting were explored as ways to reclaim “edible but out-of-spec” berries.
Some berries were rerouted to new buyers who weren’t constrained by retail appearance standards.

Suggitt says that this wasn’t a grower problem as the losses stemmed from systemic market specifications and incentives.

“A retailer alone can’t fix that,” she says. “A farmer alone can’t fix that.”

The pact’s role, she says, is to convene, diagnose and help reshape those market dynamics.

The Pact’s strawberry pilot followed fruit from farm to retail across two seasons.

(Photo courtesy of ReFED)

Retail’s Role: From Ordering Technology to Creative Uses of Imperfect Fruit

Retailers sit at a pivotal point in the chain, and they are among the pact’s most active participants.

“We have over 50% of market share,” Suggitt says, citing retail signatories such as Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, Aldi, Sprouts and New Seasons.

Suggitt says e-tailers’ motivations are multifaceted:

They want to maximize sales and reduce shrink.
They want better shelf life and fresher perception with customers.
They want consistency and efficiency in supplier partnerships.

Many of the strawberry case studies recommended retail strategies reflect current Pact-aligned efforts, including:

Smarter Ordering and Demand Planning

Retailers are investing in predictive analytics to prevent overstocking. In the strawberry pilot, one retailer using demand-planning tools reduced strawberry waste by 15.5%.

Reworking and Salvaging Product

Some retailers now “rework” clamshells, removing a few damaged berries to salvage the rest for sale or donation.

Suggitt points to one particularly successful example: “Walmart partnered through their private brands to actually take off-spec strawberries that were too small and turn them into Great Value jam,” she says.

This partnership created a new revenue stream for growers and reduced field-level waste without resorting to donation or processing at commodity prices.

“It’s not food that even needs to be donated,” Suggitt says. “This can be a marketable, salable food for us.”

Suggitt stresses retailers also need to align with each other, and not just with growers.

“If seven different retailers are asking for seven different things, that’s really hard on a supplier,” she says.

The pact, she says, helps retailers create common approaches that reduce the burden on growers.

Engaging Growers Directly: The Western Growers Partnership

The pact’s reach is expanding upstream. In addition to Del Monte and Midwest Foods, the pact recently welcomed Western Growers as a coalition partner.

“We’re really excited to have Western Growers join,” Suggitt says. “If we’re going to tackle a systemic issue, we need the whole system at the table. Growers are a really important voice.”

Because Western Growers represents hundreds of producers, the pact can now funnel solutions to a much wider audience.

“It’s an amplification and scaling mechanism,” Suggitt says. “It lets us take the things we’re learning and testing and really bring those to scale.”

Why It Matters: A More Efficient, More Profitable, Less Wasteful Supply Chain

The integration of growers, retailers, suppliers and service providers is central to the pact’s success. By using shared data, common standards and joint pilot projects, participants gain clarity on which interventions truly reduce waste and which simply shift it around.

“Here’s the shared problem. Here’s a solution that we think is worth exploring. Go figure it out,” Suggitt says.

And when they do, Suggitt says the results, like the strawberry pilot, show that reducing food waste doesn’t just benefit the environment. It increases margins, strengthens supply chain resilience and ensures more of the crop farmers work so hard to grow actually reaches consumers.

Waste Less This Thanksgiving: Simple Steps to Save Fresh Produce, Reduce Holiday Food Waste

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 16:34:07 GMT

This Thanksgiving, Americans are projected to waste an estimated 320 million pounds of food, meaning $550 million worth of perfectly good meals could be headed for the trash. According to ReFED, a U.S.-based nonprofit working to end food waste across the entire supply chain, nearly one-quarter of that waste is fresh produce.

“A significant portion of the standard Thanksgiving menu is made up of fresh produce — green beans, carrots and celery that go into stuffing, cranberries for cranberry sauce, potatoes, sweet potatoes, all that good stuff,” says Minnie Ringland, senior manager of climate and insights for ReFED. “The waste may be in the form of raw ingredients that don’t end up getting used or leftover prepared foods that don’t get eaten.”

Ringland says a little planning goes a long way toward saving money, reducing stress and keeping millions of pounds of fresh produce out of the trash.

“Better planning, storage and preparations can make a huge difference,” she says. “Figure out how much you need of each ingredient and only buy that much … or look at ways to use the same ingredient in multiple dishes. Use half of the carrots in a bag for stuffing and serve the rest roasted with a nice maple glaze. Another straightforward thing is just getting to know your fridge and your storage spaces a little better ... extend that shelf life.”

Ringland says people can start now on making room in the freezer if they might want to freeze a lot of leftovers.

“Another way to plan ahead is to coordinate what everyone’s bringing if you’re doing a potluck-style gathering,” she says. “And the last easy suggestion I have is just be prepared for leftovers; you can even let your guests know they can bring their own container if there’s plenty of food to share.”

With tips like these, people can come together this season of gratitude to honor farmers, food and the planet without wasting a single delicious bite.

‘Wasted Potential:’ New Book Explores How to Reduce Produce Loss Along the Supply Chain

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 19:28:43 GMT

The perishability of fresh produce makes it one of the most vulnerable to food loss and waste across the supply chain.

According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs , 32% of the food produced across the world is lost or wasted. Of that, 13% is lost along supply chains, whether harvesting, transport, storage or processing. The additional 19% of food wasted is at the consumer level.

In “ Wasted Potential: Tackling Food Loss and Waste Across Transforming Food Systems ,” Tata-Cornell Institute researchers Jocelyn Boiteau and Prabhu Pingali examine how perishable, nutritious foods like produce are lost from farm to fork, as well as what policies and innovations can turn that around.

The book presents a globally applicable “food loss and waste pathways framework” that evaluates both the quantity and quality of loss, critical in understanding produce, where spoilage, safety and cosmetic standards often drive waste.

“Perishable foods tend to be the more nutritious products that are most at risk of food loss and waste,” Boiteau says in an interview with The Packer. “In the U.S., the underlying issue is often quality. Once you move past spoilage and food safety, much of the loss relates to cosmetic attributes or grading standards set by the private sector.”

In “Wasted Potential,” author Jocelyn Boiteau examines how perishable, nutritious foods like produce are lost from farm to fork, as well as what policies and innovations can turn that around.

(Photo courtesy of Jocelyn Boiteau)

Boiteau says these standards often divert perfectly edible produce away from the human food chain, highlighting the need for markets that can absorb fruits and vegetables outside of “Grade A” expectations.

“I’d like to see a wider range of quality offerings in mainstream markets,” she says. “How produce looks shouldn’t dictate whether it gets eaten.”

The book also explores the trade-offs inherent in packaging — an area where fresh produce companies continue to experiment with balance.

“Packaging can extend shelf life and protect perishable foods,” Boiteau says. “But it also contributes to environmental waste. For some foods, packaging is essential for safety, but for others it might not be necessary.”

She adds that labeling and date codes can also influence consumer behavior, sometimes prompting premature disposal.

“Wasted Potential” argues that better data collection and consistent definitions are vital to understanding and addressing food loss and waste.

“Wasted Potential” is a new book from researchers at the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition.

(Photo courtesy of Jocelyn Boiteau)

“There’s no single agreed-upon definition of food loss and waste,” Boiteau says. “That makes it difficult to compare data or assess progress. We need a common core set of indicators that can be used across the value chain and across contexts.”

Data collection, especially earlier in the supply chain, remains a challenge. While retail and consumer-level waste have been widely studied, Boiteau pointed out that the middle stages of processing, packaging and distribution are less transparent — particularly when private companies are reluctant to share information.

“How and where we measure loss shapes how we tackle it,” she says.

Published by Springer as part of its Sustainable Development Goals Series, “Wasted Potential” positions food loss and waste reduction not only as an environmental imperative but also as a key strategy for improving access to nutritious diets. The authors call for investments in value-adding innovations, such as improved cold chain systems, smarter packaging and digital data tools, to strengthen market access and reduce spoilage, especially in transforming food systems.

“Reducing food loss and waste is crucial to building sustainable food systems that support healthy diets,” Boiteau says. “But our efforts have to be holistic — connecting food security, environmental goals and the economic realities across the entire produce supply chain.”

Grocers Turn to Smarter Strategies to Curb Food Waste, Boost Produce Sales

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 19:20:09 GMT

A growing number of independent grocers are finding new ways to fight food waste — and turn it into profit — through digital innovation and smarter markdowns, according to a webinar, “From Waste to Revenue: Smarter Strategies for Grocery Profitability,” hosted by IGA and Flashfood on Oct. 14.

During the session, Sarah Rivers, senior director of connected commerce for IGA, and Abby Ayers, director of independent grocery sales for Flashfood, shared insights into how retailers can reduce shrink while driving customer loyalty.

“[There is] $428 billion a year in food waste in the U.S. That just blew me away,” Rivers says.

Much of this waste stems from perfectly good products that simply don’t sell in time, Ayers says.

“For independent grocers, shrink can mean losing over $40,000 annually,” she says. “That’s literally money being thrown away — and that’s before you count the labor and energy tied up in those unsold products.”

While markdowns are a common tactic to move perishable goods, Ayers argues they’re often a reactive approach that only delays waste. Instead, she urges grocers to think digitally by expanding their audience beyond store aisles through apps , text alerts and social media.

One of the most effective areas for recovery, Ayers says, is produce and other perishable “basket drivers.” Flashfood’s data shows that shoppers will drive up to 15 minutes to score deals on fresh items like fruits, vegetables, seafood and meat.

“People seek out deals on produce,” Ayers says. “They’re saving money, reducing waste and discovering new stores in the process.”

Through the Flashfood app, stores can post discounted, short-dated items to more than 1.5 million users actively searching for deals. These customers, Ayers says, don’t just buy the discounted produce — they spend an average of $28 more on additional items per visit and check back with stores up to four times more often each month.

“Markdowns already exist,” Ayers says. “The question is: How wide is your audience? If you extend those offers digitally, you’re no longer relying on luck or foot traffic — you’re turning markdowns into marketing fuel.”

Produce, along with bakery and meat, ranks among the top contributors to grocery waste. But it’s also one of the easiest wins, Ayers says, because shoppers are highly responsive to visible freshness and value. She also encourages grocers to act sooner, marking down short-dated items two to three days before expiration rather than in the final hours and to use dynamic pricing that adjusts discounts by category and shelf life.

Ultimately, Ayers says, combating food waste can be a margin recovery opportunity rather than a cost.

“Profitability and waste reduction don’t have to be at odds,” she says. “When stores focus on fresh categories like produce and build smart processes around them, they’re not just cutting losses, they’re creating a sustainable, repeatable model.”

NoKota Packers Promotes Perfectly Good Imperfect Potatoes to Curb Food Waste

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 17:38:12 GMT

Through a campaign to educate consumers on the value of “perfectly good imperfect” potatoes, NoKota Packers Inc. is encouraging consumers to embrace less-than-perfect produce as a part of a broader effort to support sustainability and reduce agricultural waste.

The North Dakota-local promotion is geared to educate consumers that produce doesn’t have to be perfect, while helping support sustainability in agriculture and eliminate food waste.

The company is offering consumers “perfectly good imperfect” potatoes that don’t make it to grocery store shelves, according to a news release. Producing food that goes to waste consumes resources such as water, energy and cropland, in addition to incurring financial losses for farmers. As food waste continues to become a growing concern, retailers, suppliers and shoppers seek solutions — such as the use of imperfect produce, a category that includes items with cosmetic blemishes, unusual color, shape or size, the company says.

NoKota Packers is promoting the potato bins to the local market through community outreach and social media.

(Photo courtesy of NoKota Packers)

“We want to help raise awareness of the value of ‘ugly’ produce, while generating buzz about how to eliminate food waste, be better stewards of the planet — and quite frankly, find a home for perfectly good spuds,” says Carissa Olsen, president and CEO of NoKota. “We plan always to have a bin available for picking, and in the future, we’d like to add a designated day for ‘pay-what-you-can’ for the perfectly imperfect potatoes for those in need of some additional help.”

The bin will be available for people to pick up potatoes Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at NoKota’s Buxton, N.C., location at 16218 13th St. NE, a half-mile west of Interstate 29, Exit 118. 701-847-2200. NoKota is promoting the potato bins to the local market through community outreach and social media, including posts on the Facebook .

NoKota is a member of the Fresh Solutions Network of farmers. As part of FSN’s commitment to improving sustainable food management practices and reducing food waste, SPUDS less-than-perfect potatoes were added to the potato portfolio in 2023.