I’m looking for famous chains (preferably restaurant, but I guess big supermarkets, cafes, etc. are ok too) that regularly give unsold food to homeless, as a matter of policy.
Does anyone know of any?
The bakery in our Pick N’ Save Grocery stores used to give all the day old bake goods to homeless shelters. They’ve done away with their own bakery and hired another company to come in and do it now. I’m pretty sure that when the old bakery left they stopped the donations, or at least took care of it behind the scenes because I never see the guy who used to come and pick it up.
The midwest grocery store chain I used to work for used to give its day old bread and other baked goods to a shelter, until the person in charge of the pick-ups was caught selling the baked goods as her own.
They don’t do that anymore.
This page from the Second Harvest website lists its food (supplier) partners. Most are food manufacturers, but places like Food Lion, Safeway and Walmart are listed as well.
I would imagine the legal implications of such a policy would be scary as heck.
Years ago, I had a friend in NYC. His wife belonged to a church group that collected unused food from restaurants, and distributed to homeless sheters. they were SUED and served a “ceas and sesist” order by the NYC government-it seems like feeding the hungry isn’t a legal thing to do anymore! I guess its more ethical to llet people starve to death, instead!
Things may have changed. For example, the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act limits liability for those who donate food to non-profit organizations.
It’s a sanitation issue. We have two types of food left over at the end of the night:
Food that can be cooled back down (or kept cold) and served again the next day (soups, some sauces, all the uncooked meats, salad fixins, etc…) and food that can NOT be served again the next day (the potatoes, other sauces, the sauteed onions and 'shrooms, etc…)
There’s a reason we have to throw certain food away. It’s not considered safe to reheat it (or in some cases it wold just be nasty to do so.) If we’re not allowed to serve it to customers, we can’t give it to food shelters. Just because someone is homeless or doesn’t have a lot of money, doesn’t mean they get to eat un-safe food.
The list of donors to City Harvest in New York City is on this page. The list includes the following “quick serve restaurants,” some of which might be considered “famous national chain restaurants.” (OK, of the following perhaps only Dunkin’ Donuts, KFC and Au Bon Pain might be considered national chains.)
Pret A Manger
Le Pain Quotidien
Au Bon Pain
KFC
Marche Madison
Mangia Restaurant
Once Upon A Tart
Tastebud’s Natural Foods
Hangtime Cafe - NBA
Dunkin’ Donuts
Liberty Cafe
Pizza Pete’s
Hale & Heary Soups
Strictly Roots
Soul Fixins
Sunberry’s
Daisy May’s Barbecue
Dishes
Verb
Panera Bread has a prominent sign in their restaurant here that says they donate unsold baked goods at the end of each day to community agencies. I assume this is a corporate policy, rather than a local one.
I believe a lot of these things come down to individual store policies. After all, what local agencies there are, their reputation, their level of need, their willingness to pick up food at a given place and time, their reliability, etc, all vary from place to place.
FTR, I used to work at a homeless shelter and would pick up expired baked goods from the local grocery stores and donut shops. We usually had more than we could give away. Occasionally, we’d get pallets of yogurt or whatever that was about to expire. Once or twice, we got pans of rice and beans from a local Mexican restaurant. We didn’t really need tons of congealing hamburgers or pans of spaghetti carbonara every night. That stuff only stays good for so long, and then you have to dispose of it somehow. It was mostly easier and healthier to make use of donated or purchased (with donated money) non-perishables, frozen meats, and fresh vegetables.
OTOH, I later worked for another organization that supposedly had a one time collected pizza left over at the end of buffets and distributed it to the homeless. Sounds risky from a liability perspective, though.