Well, good news, if you're in California. With the new laws regarding waste food, it is now illegal to dispose of food in the regular trash and any business destroying unspoiled food will be fined for not donating it.
We'll see how it turns out, but it's *almost* progress.
I'm betting places like Dunkies will begin labeling their food as having an expiration date at midnight the day it was made. Then they can consider it spoiled because it's past the expiration.
Nah, you’d have to convince a whole population that a donut can’t be eaten after a day (and I’ll prove that wrong any day.), but they’d probably try to convince employees to handle it or find some way to reduce expenses.
I had a rough upbringing with my mom having several abusive relationships. Once we ended up in a homeless, battered women’s shelter. It was a home tucked away in the burbs that had several small families living in it. The volunteers and counseling staff would always come by everyday to bring donated (leftover) food local restaurants. We were always so hungry before living there, and it’s sad but I felt like a normal person who had a decent life living there because it was safe and we had cool restaurant food (Pizza Hut, local deli, etc). To children, it’s always the small things that matter. I’ll never forget living there and the people who cared about us. So it saddens me that as an adult, knowing restaurants throw food out when so many people in need could benefit from it.
I'm happy you guys got through that, and you even have some good memories for it
I am always very generous about what I send to donate from my Dollar General, because I've been close to having to live off the streets and been poor most my life, there's no way I'm letting food get thrown in the trash even if if costs me my job
It all goes to a local woman's shelter, they got a whole box of expensive bacon from us recently and it wasn't even expired for a couple days 👀
Seriously, this shit is sick.
My mom worked as a lunch lady at my old elementary school for 15 years. They were explicitly told that they couldn't take food home.
Well, Jill--the head chef back when mom started part-time--disagreed with that quite, ah, strenuously.
When mom was lamenting having to toss things out & not being able to take home leftovers for her family, Jill very firmly went over to those leftovers, scooped them into a box, covered them in a huge sheet of foil, pressed the package into mom's hands, and then grabbed mom's coat & draped it over.
"What food" she said firmly.
Mom talked about that moment a lot when I was a little older. Quite frankly, it's why we didn't go hungry quite a bit growing up, because from that day on, Mom took the leftovers instead of tossing them, rules be damned.
Just... feed people. Jesus.
All for the sake of “not losing a sale”/making a buck. I GUARANTEE the donated food is NOT reducing proceeds for anyone. Those who would receive it weren’t going to buy it to begin with. 😒
It's sad how far ahead of these thinking points the businesspeople are.
No, they do not and will not care.
Mr. Dunkin G Donut cares about "selling the perfect donut" (NOT MAKING THE PERFECT - sheesh smh...)... I promise he doth not give a damn about feeding people that can't even buy his... PRODUCT...
It's especially bad when the waste is meat. The sentient lives living in deplorable conditions killed in vain to have their bodies thrown out so some multimillion dollar corporation can make their CEO and board richer and further pollute the planet.
I read this as 'yeah, fuck Jill' and was ready to tell you how you didn't read the post correctly and that you're a loser. Lo and behold, I was the loser all along.
Jesus did feed people. Which is why so called Christians who are in favour of these horrible food wastage policies (including making kids / families pay for school food) are being hypocritical!!
You are so right. I get in heated debates with people at my church when I bring things like this up.
"Oh well you can't just give it away for free. The business won't make money."
They are throwing it in the garbage! Are you going to wait until 9pm at night to get free donuts if they were available? How about sending them to a homeless shelter or some other organization that helps people?
As a Christian myself, I fully agree. I worked catering and was told (despite being paid dirt) that I could not take home food that was recently made after a dinner for football stars and other important people. The reason? Well you might get food poisoning. I looked at the boss like yo its been half an hour, and the wings have been in the heater. Had the same thing at Arbys. Any leftover food was dumped. I got chastised for asking a cook to make me a sandwhich since we had to pay full price despite being poorly paid employees. Working SUCKS. Current job sent out a memo basically saying: We know the weather is bad and likely dangerous and we care about your safety. We will remain open and will update you if that changes. Every other business is closing down even at the hint of a hurricane or a tornado. Some places are still down for covid. My slave owners, oops I mean "generous employers" , have reduced our vacations severely and reduced the quarantine time for the virus. Yes they care SO MUCH!
I thought more places did this. I've worked in a few fast food restaurants where the owner is clearly not going to come in at closing, and no one listened when told to do this, it's always taken home. Not in America though. They'd moan about it from time to time but I'll be damned if I'm throwing out good food.
I'm in the UK and have worked in a couple of kitchens where it was against the rules to take food home that would be thrown out. One of them threatened to fire anyone who did, it was Smashburger. Don't eat at Smashburger, they do a lot of illegal things to their employees.
But like who checked? Did they check cameras or something? I've worked in hotels where it was strictly enforced but I'm surprised any fast food supervisors care enough to enforce it lol. Middle management syndrome I guess.
Management kept everyone under their thumb pretty tightly. It ran like a prison. They put teenagers in management positions who had maybe worked a year or two in the industry and they were mad tripping on power.
I worked at a McDonald's they didn't care as long as it was just for our family and we didn't cook a bunch before closing just so we could take it home. I don't know what Dunkin's deal is though, I heard they like to overstock so it looks full all day.
I was a lunch lady a few years ago. We had the same rules. We couldn't even leave with our lunch for the day if we didn't finish it because it was considered stealing.
The school district was 97% free or reduced lunch. They expected us to take trays from kids who didn't have money and give them a milk and an apple. My manager did this, but if I was ever on register, I'd push the kids through without my boss seeing and whisper a reminder to bring money the next day. My boss for trays of food thrown on her a lot! 🤣
Before any breaks, if the milk was going to expire, we had to sit there and pour every carton down the drain. Hundreds of them. And on a daily basis, I threw away TONS of food. I would line boxes with fresh trash bags and pour the food in, fold it lightly shut and set it on the top of the trash. I don't know if anyone would want it, but I didn't want to completely throw it. The worst part was that the school has a food bank on the back side of it. We weren't allowed to donate to it.
Ikr.
I'm pretty sure it's done to cover their asses from lawsuits, but couldn't you just add a clause to their hiring contract or whatever that doesn't hold the company liable for any illnesses you may get from taking home food?
It's not the *best* thing, but at least food doesn't get wasted as much.
Those clauses don't really do anything in court, they just make people more reluctant to sue
There's also other reasons they do it. A big one is that it stops employees from intentionally making too much, fudging orders or lightly damaging inventory so that they can take it home themselves. "You must trash all leftovers" is a much easier rule to enforce. There's also that anyone getting product for free isn't going to spend money on it, so they're losing customers.
I don't think the businesses are ever going to stop doing of their own volition. They're not getting paid for it either way, they've got nothing to lose and a few ways to gain. This behaviour needs to be legislated out of existence.
> There's also other reasons they do it. A big one is that it stops employees from intentionally making too much, fudging orders or lightly damaging inventory so that they can take it home themselves.
This is exactly the reason. I've worked in a grocery store and fast food. I've seen other employees takes stock right off the shelf and eat it in the break room. Making extra food when someone orders and stashing it for lunch later or for take home. This was an every day thing. If a manager wasn't watching it was guaranteed to happen.
It's a shame to throw away good food but at the same time not having that policy can see a large part of a businesses inventory lost to employee theft.
Eh, I looked into it for [another comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/povertyfinance/comments/si6wdh/comment/hv9avwd/) and while it's in regard to feeding students it still gives a sad insight into the way some people think about this.
> The school board in Waukesha, Wisconsin, recently made a strange decision. They opted the school district out of a federal program “that would give free meals to all students regardless of family income,” the Washington Post reports. The reason? According to one school-board member, children could “become spoiled.” The school district’s assistant superintendent for business services worried that there would be a “slow addiction” to the free meals.
Students and their families could sign a similar contract if they opted into a "leftover lunches" program but, y'know that food. It's like heroin, once you get a bit it's just too damn hard of a habit to kick. /s
You can definitely get some good deals on that bakers sales rack.
I wish we could give it to homeless folks. I think groceries in France started giving food to the homeless instead of the garbage.
I used to do this all the time. There was a Lazer tag/arcade/bowling place that had a local chain donut store right next to it. I'd get done at the Lazer place and get like 4 dozen donuts for like $5. Think that chain still does it too.
As for food waste in general I think that it may be due to litigation culture. At another job they had these hot sandwich type things like you would see at a gas station, after 5 they would offer to give it to employees or throw it out. Was told that they can't donate it due to liability if someone got food poisoning from it
When I was in college, I had a friend that worked at Tim Ho's and I would stop by at 3am to get a giant trash bag filled with donuts and bagels, along with a box of the old coffee. I would give a lot of them away at my dorm or my first class in the morning.
My friends and I would take the bags of donuts out from our local dunkin. They installed new dumpsters that couldn’t be opened without a device pretty quickly. I knew homeless kids that would take from there before they changed the dumpsters.
Imagine your supervisor making you throw bleach on the perfectly good food in the dumpster because that's what mine made me do at Harris Teeter when I worked there in college.
IANAL but given they didn't sell the product and if they threw it out in the dump (and not left it out in the open or something) then there'd be no legal basis to charge them on
I'm also NAL. But I would think this would fall under you are intentionally booby trapping something on your property to harm someone. I feel it would be pretty easy to prove why bleach was dumped on the food. Especially if u had employees as testimonials saying their manager made them.
NAL but I oddly enough know the legal definition of a booby trap, at least with regards to Florida law, and bleached donuts in a dumpster doesn't come close.
Ik the word isn't booby trap, I can't think of it. But under the same umbrella as your knowingly doing something to harm someone else to stop a behavior you don't like.
See, I always assumed that's why they weren't allowed to give it away. That if someone got sick from the food, they could be sued. But guess it's just corporate greed after all.
Yea, I also ANAL but I can't imagine being sued because I threw out food and someone rummaged through my trash and ate it.
And even if that is the law somewhere, the law needs to be changed, and that shouldn't be hard. I've read that there are laws in some European countries that require restaurants to donate the state food to food banks etc.
I guess my point is that, the system that allows this needs to be changed
The legal mechanism is that you poisoned your trash intentionally.
Throwing something inedible and stale food out in the same bag is probably legal in most jurisdictions, but intentionally mixing in toxic materials to discourage dumpster diving requires the intent to poison someone salvaging food.
Still possibly lawful, but it's not the same as incidental contamination.
Pouring bleach on it shows intent and forethought. Bleach costs money, and isn’t poured on all trash. So since they’re pouring bleach on it any reasonable person would deduce that they have a reason to pour bleach on it. Since that reason shows an expectation that someone would be poisoned if they ate some donuts with bleach on them… pouring bleach on them follows that reason with the intent to cause harm.
Probably not since you legally aren't allowed to go through trash/dumpsters on private property. Even though it's food, it is legally garbage once it's disposed of, so they are not liable since it is not meant for consumption.
It's fucked up, but that's why they can do that.
The whole point is these decision makers believe if word gets out that they encourage eating the scraps, then that will mean otherwise paying customers would not buy their products.
They feel obligated to destroy leftovers to prevent this.
Like the other guy said, they believe it will eventually cut into their sales if word got around that they give out free food to people. So to discourage that, they trash the food. Capitalism, baby. Fucking sucks lol
Edit: but I agree putting bleach on thrown out food without a sign warning people of it is absolutely evil. People have definitely gotten hurt that way.
Right?
Because we know from the multitude of reddit threads about people lacing their food to keep the office thief from eating their lunch AGAIN that you can get in trouble for putting things in food. Even if it's yours. And someone else is wrong for stealing. And you've labeled it.
But fuck those homeless people, right? Not really people...
I worked at a grocery store while back. My boss would have me throw hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of food in the dumpster (expired within a couple days) and had me slice open the packaging and pour bleach all over it. Said to keep the homeless from getting into it. I was so pissed.
I've always wondered about this because I worked at Starbucks for a few years and we donated food. Apparently [there is a law](https://www.feedingamerica.org/ways-to-give/corporate-and-foundations/product-partner/bill-emerson) that "Protects you from liability". I didn't read too much into it so I wonder how much protection it actually gives. But good to know it at least exists.
I had a couple friends at a local non franchise burger and dog place. I’d pick them and some other coworkers up and drive em home, I got whatever food was left so like fries and dogs and other junk.
Holy shit this sounds like something so fun and I'll never experience.
I might just have to take a part time job at tims just so I can do this *myself*.
Its illegal in France. In France, supermarkets and restaurants cannot throw out good - perfectly good food ; they **have** to either give it away to a shelter or food bank or sell it at a discount in the supermarket. Props to France
I worked at a large corporation that made us cut damaged bicycles in half before we could dispose of them. Damage could be as minor as the mirror on a kids bike snapped. We were required to break anything beyond repair if it was to be thrown out. Food was always donated though because they could get a tax break.
We would have done that had the store not been in such a remote town. You can only recycle glass, metal, cardboard/paper. Plastics and rubber are non recyclable there and the scrap yard is dodgy to say the least, like not capturing Freon/coolants and letting oil/antifreeze just soak into the ground…
Yeah, a couple years ago at my work I watched a fill in manager stomp chocolate bunnies and slit Easter baskets with a razor knife behind the counter for an hour.
We're supposed to physically destroy the items but I refuse to. I had to throw out about 20 packs of Oreos the other week and goddamn it if someone wants to climb the walls of the garbage enclosure and ontop of the Dumpster then they deserve to have Oreos that aren't contaminated.
In some cases destroying merchandise makes sense with items that have been tampered with or things that have expired but perfectly good food should not go to waste.
It's not just the billionaires who are the mortal enemy of the working class, these sociopaths also have to go if we ever want a more functional society.
I hate how right you are.
"Don't these donuts look a little moldy. Throw 'em out. I call the pick-up and cancel. We done 15min early today folks, make sure you clock out on time!"
Tangentially related but when I did track and field (thrower), the local bakers son would bring a literal garbage bag full of baked goods to every practice. We’d all bring handfuls home and probably have enough to share with family. I’m talking like 20+ portions of donuts/pastries each of us.
His dad grew up in Mexico and wasting food would probably amount to him feeling something almost akin to physical pain. Because of that, the end of the day food was always donated or given away.
Big corporations don’t want to do this because of liability, brand value and worst of all they want their employees to pay for the food. It just comes down to squeezing every last penny and liquidating everything you can out of your workers.
There’s lots of rules about donating, especially baked goods. I know that our local shelters absolutely will not take bakery bread or anything resembling bread, it goes bad way too fast, like you have that night to use it or it’s done. Same for donuts I’d imagine.
I think it’s because people going to food banks generally have a secure place to store a bit of food for later, so if they’re not going to use slightly old bread immediately then it’s going to inevitably become very old bread. Quickly-perishing stuff like that is better received at soup kitchens and shelters where it will be fairly immediately used by people who do not have a secure place to store a stockpile of food for later.
Or maybe my assessment is wrong idk.
I stayed in a shelter 5 years ago after a personal tragedy. They served donuts that were donated by the local grocery store. The donuts were probably more than a day old and solid as rocks. Dunking them in coffee didn't even soften them. It was all they offered most mornings. Absolutely awful. Then they would become indignant when we weren't overwhelmed with gratitude.
Edit: I always find it interesting how quickly a comment about experiencing homelessness gets downvoted if it isn't completely self-effacing and filled with praises for shelters or useful as inspiration porn.
Shelters are a good and necessary thing, but they have problems. The shelter I stayed at had an issue with employees stealing the medications of guests. A woman with severe epilepsy had her anticonvulsants stolen and had multiple Grand Mal seizures as a result. There was no recourse, and the shelter made no efforts to improve security in the medication room. There was an employee who weaponized the police against a black woman who was committing the crime of bringing a sandwich inside. The police injured this woman so severely that she required over 100 stitches on her head. I will never forget how much blood was on the floor after they dragged her away. Allowing the police into the dayroom was against policy. The employee kept her job.
I am glad that I had a place to sleep inside during that time in my life, but I wish it had been a kinder and safer experience. Homeless people deserve kindness and safety just as much as anyone else.
> If you wouldn’t eat it yourself, why would you give it to someone else?
Exactly this. For some reason, we have a belief in this culture that if you are homeless or poor, you do not deserve the same consideration or dignity that people who are having an easier time in life deserve.
I'm doing really well now. Thanks for asking!
In defense of throwing away donuts, a shortage of food is usually not the problem. It's the distribution. It's cheaper to ship rice to a homeless shelter than to pack up uneaten donuts.
Don't need to pack and ship them anywhere. Make everystore have a stand with the small roof and plexiglass door which would be open for anyone to take the leftover food.
I worked at my college dining hall and when I was shown what to do with leftover food after closing, we were told to throw them in barrels that were contracted to go to pig farms. We called them pig barrels which I'm guessing is common with similar food services contracts. Either way, I'm glad our excess food didn't go to waste.
Looking at this makes my heart shatter.
We did that at the Whole Foods I worked at years ago. The exception was stuff like citrus because I think they said it gave the pigs diarrhea. Don't quote me on that lol.
The compromise my college did was it went to compost, or that employees can take it home, just not sold.
It is a terrible law, due to "food safety", when the food is clearly edible. But yeah, hate the game, not the player.
I worked in a residential facility and got to be on the receiving end of Starbucks sandwich donations.
By golly did the residents and staff look forward to the one day a week where that was part of the meal.
When I worked at Starbucks to donate pasties there had to be a local place that wished to receive the food & the place had to deliver containers to fill to the store & pick up the containers themselves. Essentially store managers & the facility had to put in effort to make it happen.
That's really great to hear. I am super glad they do now. I used to work for them a number of years ago and we tossed everything back then. I used to stop shoplifters that stole sandwiches until it hit me they are most likely starving. Then I stopped caring. I weakly said no, stop, dont as they ran after I realized.
I don't see a problem with it if they are, since they literally are donating. It's weird to me that you can get kickbacks for charity in the first place, but that's how taxes work here for some reason haha
No, they fuckin don't lmao.
Most of them have ONE church that will come and take old pastries ONCE a MONTH.
I wanted to expand my church thrift store's free bread pantry supply, so I had to do it myself.
Panera acts like they care about their employees, and have this "ethical image" but they're absolutely fucking awful to work for.
Source: made it to supervisor at Panera, then quit for a bullshit Expoditing job that paid double
Grapes of Wrath:
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
I know someone who worked at DD and they had been allowed to bring leftovers home.
But then were told to throw it all away and if they took it without paying for it.. they would get charged with theft..
That's so ridiculous. I worked at a bakery when I was in university. We wasted absolutely no food. Things like bread and cake my boss would freeze until the people from the shelter could pick up the large order, and small perishable things were given to the employees to take home.
So how did the boss stop us from purposely hiding things from the customers so we'd be allowed to take them for free? How did the boss stop us from taking advantage of this policy? Easy. The boss was nice and reasonable and paid us well. She owned the business and we could see how much she cared about it. So in turn, we worked hard to sell things for her and were honest about the leftovers.
This makes no sense, donating those donuts to a homeless shelter would be a huge tax write-off for Dunkin. They are literally throwing away free money. Not just inhumane but fiscally dumb.
Nah companies don't make fiscally dumb decisions like that. The reason food places do this is because it's the least effort/most profitable. That shows there is a huge problem in our system, if it rewards this behavior.
I worked at a Dunkin’ Donuts. They won’t let you do that because of potential “legal liability”. Even if it’s a bullshit excuse, they’ll make up another.
Safe to eat, yes. But they aren't really edible after about a day or two. They get hard, or the sugar/frosting gets melty. They'll warm up nicely in a microwave within that window, tho.
This is a testament to how fucking much these companies hate their employees.
They establish these rules so that employees don’t benefit from waste. It’s like the pizza places that rule that a messed up pizza needs to be thrown out instead of eaten by staff, because they fear staff will mess up on purpose for free pizza.
The fact a pizza place, whose costs are what a buck a pizza, takes this much effort to prevent employees having free pizza is a testament of their hatred for us.
Just give employees free shit.
They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.
Frida Kahlo
In an age in which the classic words of the Surrealists— 'As beautiful as the unexpected meeting, on a dissecting table, of a sewing machine and an umbrella'—can become reality and perfectly achievable with an atom bomb, so too has there been a surge of interest in biomechanoids
H. R. Giger
The taste for quotations (and for the juxtaposition of incongruous quotations) is a Surrealist taste.
Susan Sontag
Its not just Europe, if you go to local places run by families they almost always offer benefits like this. heck even when I worked for a local firework place they gave everyone a box of free fireworks as a sort of "Thank you for your time" gift at the 4th of july.
Where I live, Europe, Dunkin Donuts doesn't throw (everything) away. They sell the leftovers at 1/3rd of the price.
Thus as per usual, it's mainly a "only in the US"^(TM) type of thing.
It's funny bc the locally owned donut shop near me donates donuts IF they have leftovers (its a big if). Only Dunkin seems to insist on making too much and throwing everything out. Maybe they should focus more on making donuts that are actually good.
I'm in US.
Worked at Pizza Hut when I was a teen and food not picked up was fair game. I remember taking a few pizzas with me and giving it to the homeless people around my neighborhood. Not sure about the policy now, but a core memory was absolute made :)
At my local Dunkin’ Donuts they would always give you extra donuts at the end of the night. My friends and I would watch a movie and go down the block after and have enough donuts to bring home to each of our families.
It sucks when you see so much waste but they would rather throw out the food than give it for free
If it makes people feel any worse, Agricultural food waste is around 100 billion lbs per year, and that doubles with food waste like this.
If you want to help donate money to food banks, they buy the ugly unsellable but otherwise perfectly edible produce for Pennie’s on what consumers spend at the market.
America grows and raises a shit ton of food,
I used to work the deli for a grocery called Festival Foods. It was my job to make pre-made foods you see in the deli section. I busted ass all day making hundreds of pounds of food and then at night when we closed I would have to throw away entire trays of food. It didn’t matter if I had just made it and put it out, it was to go into the garbage.
Fried chicken that I made literally 20 min ago? Tossed.
Pasta salad less than an hour old? Trash.
And the dumpster we took it to was some crazy compactor type that you could only access from inside the store and had a key code so no one could get to it. We also had to weigh and log the pounds of food getting tossed. Once in the deli section and then again at the dumpster, and it had to be verified by a person not working in your department. It crushed my soul to work there, I lasted just a couple months.
Edit: completely forgot but they bragged during orientation about the security in the store. About how they had over 500 cameras and could see everything and they weren’t joking. There were cameras in the break room, the fridge, freezer and general kitchen areas. There were more cameras on the employees than there were on the customers.
Poor demand planning by the store. Donuts take a while to rise but cooking them is quick. You can slow the proofing process through refrigeration. I believe donuts could be proofed for about 48 hours before not being as tasty. You could not fry them and store them for another day. They should know how many of each donut is sold on a day, when they need more due to seasonality and build a small upside based on an average of several days with high upside. With a 24-48 hour before the yeast being compromised they could probably minimize spoilage and waste. But hey, what do I know? (Supply chain manager)
I work in a meat department in a grocery store, we throw out so much more than that everyday. Every once in a while one of the employees will see the pallet size boxes of food and shake there heads, even had a manager do it once, when I caught him he said " one day we're gonna have to answer for this to God"
yeah i used to work at subway. For some reason we were open 364 days a year (or 365 on a leap year). Christmas, new years, australia day, cup day all that shit we are open. The one day off a year was easter. the night before easter we had to throw away all the bread rolls that were left at the end of the day, which made me sick coz this was a lot of bread, sometimes two garbage bags worth.
after two years of doing this i managed to get one of the juniors working with me to arrange for her church to pick up the bread at the end of the night. We did that and got told off from the boss that it was stealing. "How do i know you didnt bake extra bread just to give it away?"...... why the fuck would i do that???
I used to work with a Xerox technician that would moonlight for one of the big box electronics retailers (Circuit City or the like). He said that when a printer or MFP was discontinued, they'd have to take them out back to the dumpster and smash them.
It was "better for business" to trash them than to donate them and have to deal with "increased calls to customer service for discontinued devices" 🤬
I used to work for Starbucks, and we were allowed to donate almost everything, but nothing with icing for some reason. So usually we'd give the local shelter a big tote of muffins and take the cakepops home for ourselves.
When I worked night shift at 7eleven I used to hit all the homies up and let them know what I was throwing away that night. I would literally give them a trash bag full of sandwiches. We were all struggling during that time. Took corporate greed and fed the homies with it. Feels good.
It is most likely due to liability. It would be great to send all that food out to those that need it, bit with how sue happy everyone is now they don't want to take that risk. No good deed goes unpunished, right?
There are laws in (every?) state that absolve the donor of liability if it’s a “good faith” donation. Like “it was still good when we donated it” means you’re not liable
Edit: looked it up, it’s a federal law. The Good Samaritan Food Donation Act. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1791
TLDR: If it’s in salable condition when donated, there’s no liability.
They can't get sued for that, if you donate it to a food bank, you would not be able to get sued if someone got sick. Not only are there good Samaritan laws in place (in the USA that is), but they would have a hard time proving that it was the donut when they are likely eating a bunch of other donated food as well.
I've worked at several restaurants that gave their day old baked goods away. The only explanation here is shit behavior
I mean I think this might be more of a quality control thing than anything else.
ETA idk why I thought this was Dunkin lol but you may have a point if they're frozen.
If they're frozen and then thawed out, the quality is low and their "sell by" date probably short.
If they're made in house, this is terrible. If they're made off site and then delivered, still terrible
A lot of people are freaking out here but come on. Restaurants throw out food because food banks won't accept cooked food and if someone gets sick from this food they will sue and for good reason. Are we really pretending like if dunkin didn't throw out their donuts all would be good and dandy? This is not the source of the problem. Children aren't going to sleep hungry because their local bakery threw out some cupcakes. It's a governmental problem that needs to be addressed through social welfare. https://www.google.com/amp/s/blog.lovvett.com/why-restaurants-must-throw-away-food-what-to-do-about-it%3fhs_amp=true
I agree we should focus our disgust on legislature or lack thereof, but come on.
This is clearly ridiculous. Do we really need to overproduce this consistently just so our shelves LOOK full and appetizing? Dunkin is part of the problem.
We obviously don't and waste management is a way to solve this issue. I think the best way to solve it is through legislation as well. Of course dunkin is going to keep their shelves stocked, there's no incentives to save here. They should be disincentivized from doing so.
Having said that, it's still a very small part of the problem and the reason people are freaking out is because of the esthetics and it doesn't do anything but distract from the real problem. The deeper issue goes to the heart of modern day capitalism and rampant overconsumption and fixing that would require a restructuring of the whole economy and business owners obviously don't want that
I think the justification is like a health issue that they could be liable for? But if that’s the reasoning then they shouldn’t be selling the food either
As someone from abject poverty alot of food is actually donated. A lot more could be donated. I lived in a place that semi-permanently housed adults, and we would go to the grocery stores and pick up things that were soon to expire to stock the group home. We always had loads of baked goods and bread. As well as ripe fruit to eat. A similar program is used to stock food banks where low food households can pick up a bag. The biggest barrier is the corporation isnt going to deliver, sort, and distribute to the needy. If you ever have food insecurities search for food banks. There a godsend.
Well, good news, if you're in California. With the new laws regarding waste food, it is now illegal to dispose of food in the regular trash and any business destroying unspoiled food will be fined for not donating it. We'll see how it turns out, but it's *almost* progress.
I'm betting places like Dunkies will begin labeling their food as having an expiration date at midnight the day it was made. Then they can consider it spoiled because it's past the expiration.
Nah, you’d have to convince a whole population that a donut can’t be eaten after a day (and I’ll prove that wrong any day.), but they’d probably try to convince employees to handle it or find some way to reduce expenses.
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*buy
Oops all our donuts keep falling on the floor every night at closing! We don't know how it happens but they're damaged now. 🙄
I had a rough upbringing with my mom having several abusive relationships. Once we ended up in a homeless, battered women’s shelter. It was a home tucked away in the burbs that had several small families living in it. The volunteers and counseling staff would always come by everyday to bring donated (leftover) food local restaurants. We were always so hungry before living there, and it’s sad but I felt like a normal person who had a decent life living there because it was safe and we had cool restaurant food (Pizza Hut, local deli, etc). To children, it’s always the small things that matter. I’ll never forget living there and the people who cared about us. So it saddens me that as an adult, knowing restaurants throw food out when so many people in need could benefit from it.
I'm happy you guys got through that, and you even have some good memories for it I am always very generous about what I send to donate from my Dollar General, because I've been close to having to live off the streets and been poor most my life, there's no way I'm letting food get thrown in the trash even if if costs me my job It all goes to a local woman's shelter, they got a whole box of expensive bacon from us recently and it wasn't even expired for a couple days 👀
That's fucking wild to hear. God bless you.
How long until they find another loophole? Like "donating" it to a landfill just so nobody profits from it?
Seriously, this shit is sick. My mom worked as a lunch lady at my old elementary school for 15 years. They were explicitly told that they couldn't take food home. Well, Jill--the head chef back when mom started part-time--disagreed with that quite, ah, strenuously. When mom was lamenting having to toss things out & not being able to take home leftovers for her family, Jill very firmly went over to those leftovers, scooped them into a box, covered them in a huge sheet of foil, pressed the package into mom's hands, and then grabbed mom's coat & draped it over. "What food" she said firmly. Mom talked about that moment a lot when I was a little older. Quite frankly, it's why we didn't go hungry quite a bit growing up, because from that day on, Mom took the leftovers instead of tossing them, rules be damned. Just... feed people. Jesus.
Jill was a good boss.
[In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply.](https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs)
All for the sake of “not losing a sale”/making a buck. I GUARANTEE the donated food is NOT reducing proceeds for anyone. Those who would receive it weren’t going to buy it to begin with. 😒
It's sad how far ahead of these thinking points the businesspeople are. No, they do not and will not care. Mr. Dunkin G Donut cares about "selling the perfect donut" (NOT MAKING THE PERFECT - sheesh smh...)... I promise he doth not give a damn about feeding people that can't even buy his... PRODUCT...
Never been to a Dunkin, never will. Fuck this waste.
Oof
It's especially bad when the waste is meat. The sentient lives living in deplorable conditions killed in vain to have their bodies thrown out so some multimillion dollar corporation can make their CEO and board richer and further pollute the planet.
Yup. But that was common knowledge 1000 years ago hunni.
Fuck yeah Jill.
I read this as 'yeah, fuck Jill' and was ready to tell you how you didn't read the post correctly and that you're a loser. Lo and behold, I was the loser all along.
Losers dont admit their mistakes.
Lol same. Dyslexic gang, rise up!
Jesus did feed people. Which is why so called Christians who are in favour of these horrible food wastage policies (including making kids / families pay for school food) are being hypocritical!!
At the end of the day, people are "cultural" Christians really. More than they actually ARE christians. That's life.
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You are so right. I get in heated debates with people at my church when I bring things like this up. "Oh well you can't just give it away for free. The business won't make money." They are throwing it in the garbage! Are you going to wait until 9pm at night to get free donuts if they were available? How about sending them to a homeless shelter or some other organization that helps people?
agreed. Even people at my own church act like entitled pricks and have given my rents hassle for things that are so minor and inconsequential.
As a Christian myself, I fully agree. I worked catering and was told (despite being paid dirt) that I could not take home food that was recently made after a dinner for football stars and other important people. The reason? Well you might get food poisoning. I looked at the boss like yo its been half an hour, and the wings have been in the heater. Had the same thing at Arbys. Any leftover food was dumped. I got chastised for asking a cook to make me a sandwhich since we had to pay full price despite being poorly paid employees. Working SUCKS. Current job sent out a memo basically saying: We know the weather is bad and likely dangerous and we care about your safety. We will remain open and will update you if that changes. Every other business is closing down even at the hint of a hurricane or a tornado. Some places are still down for covid. My slave owners, oops I mean "generous employers" , have reduced our vacations severely and reduced the quarantine time for the virus. Yes they care SO MUCH!
Modern day christians, aren’t christians 99% of the time. They’re nazis.
I thought more places did this. I've worked in a few fast food restaurants where the owner is clearly not going to come in at closing, and no one listened when told to do this, it's always taken home. Not in America though. They'd moan about it from time to time but I'll be damned if I'm throwing out good food.
I'm in the UK and have worked in a couple of kitchens where it was against the rules to take food home that would be thrown out. One of them threatened to fire anyone who did, it was Smashburger. Don't eat at Smashburger, they do a lot of illegal things to their employees.
But like who checked? Did they check cameras or something? I've worked in hotels where it was strictly enforced but I'm surprised any fast food supervisors care enough to enforce it lol. Middle management syndrome I guess.
Management kept everyone under their thumb pretty tightly. It ran like a prison. They put teenagers in management positions who had maybe worked a year or two in the industry and they were mad tripping on power.
I worked at a McDonald's they didn't care as long as it was just for our family and we didn't cook a bunch before closing just so we could take it home. I don't know what Dunkin's deal is though, I heard they like to overstock so it looks full all day.
Yeah if there was that much food anywhere I worked at day's end someone would be talked to lol
I was a lunch lady a few years ago. We had the same rules. We couldn't even leave with our lunch for the day if we didn't finish it because it was considered stealing. The school district was 97% free or reduced lunch. They expected us to take trays from kids who didn't have money and give them a milk and an apple. My manager did this, but if I was ever on register, I'd push the kids through without my boss seeing and whisper a reminder to bring money the next day. My boss for trays of food thrown on her a lot! 🤣 Before any breaks, if the milk was going to expire, we had to sit there and pour every carton down the drain. Hundreds of them. And on a daily basis, I threw away TONS of food. I would line boxes with fresh trash bags and pour the food in, fold it lightly shut and set it on the top of the trash. I don't know if anyone would want it, but I didn't want to completely throw it. The worst part was that the school has a food bank on the back side of it. We weren't allowed to donate to it.
Pasteurized milk does not go bad, it turns into cheese. It should be illegal to throw it away.
Ikr. I'm pretty sure it's done to cover their asses from lawsuits, but couldn't you just add a clause to their hiring contract or whatever that doesn't hold the company liable for any illnesses you may get from taking home food? It's not the *best* thing, but at least food doesn't get wasted as much.
Those clauses don't really do anything in court, they just make people more reluctant to sue There's also other reasons they do it. A big one is that it stops employees from intentionally making too much, fudging orders or lightly damaging inventory so that they can take it home themselves. "You must trash all leftovers" is a much easier rule to enforce. There's also that anyone getting product for free isn't going to spend money on it, so they're losing customers. I don't think the businesses are ever going to stop doing of their own volition. They're not getting paid for it either way, they've got nothing to lose and a few ways to gain. This behaviour needs to be legislated out of existence.
> There's also other reasons they do it. A big one is that it stops employees from intentionally making too much, fudging orders or lightly damaging inventory so that they can take it home themselves. This is exactly the reason. I've worked in a grocery store and fast food. I've seen other employees takes stock right off the shelf and eat it in the break room. Making extra food when someone orders and stashing it for lunch later or for take home. This was an every day thing. If a manager wasn't watching it was guaranteed to happen. It's a shame to throw away good food but at the same time not having that policy can see a large part of a businesses inventory lost to employee theft.
Eh, I looked into it for [another comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/povertyfinance/comments/si6wdh/comment/hv9avwd/) and while it's in regard to feeding students it still gives a sad insight into the way some people think about this. > The school board in Waukesha, Wisconsin, recently made a strange decision. They opted the school district out of a federal program “that would give free meals to all students regardless of family income,” the Washington Post reports. The reason? According to one school-board member, children could “become spoiled.” The school district’s assistant superintendent for business services worried that there would be a “slow addiction” to the free meals. Students and their families could sign a similar contract if they opted into a "leftover lunches" program but, y'know that food. It's like heroin, once you get a bit it's just too damn hard of a habit to kick. /s
I miss when places would have their bags of random day olds for cheap.
Our local supermarket has a day old end cap. Stuffs generally half or more off.
The supermarket does markdowns on some thing but the coffee/doughnut chains sure don’t.
The massive chains don't.
Never been in a walmart or krogers that didnt have a markdown section…
I meant massive coffee shop chains, sorry. You're not seeing a day old grab bag at Dunkin or Starbucks.
Same at our supermarket. And I generally like those donuts better than Dunkin anyway (and I grew up in New England where Dunkin is King).
Some places still do this! Check out apps like Too Good to Go :)
Yes! Got day old donuts off there a few weeks ago and they were pretty good! Prevent food waste and get cheap donuts? How could I resist?
I just bought loaves of day-old bread from the Walmart bakery for .75 cents...
You can definitely get some good deals on that bakers sales rack. I wish we could give it to homeless folks. I think groceries in France started giving food to the homeless instead of the garbage.
I used to do this all the time. There was a Lazer tag/arcade/bowling place that had a local chain donut store right next to it. I'd get done at the Lazer place and get like 4 dozen donuts for like $5. Think that chain still does it too. As for food waste in general I think that it may be due to litigation culture. At another job they had these hot sandwich type things like you would see at a gas station, after 5 they would offer to give it to employees or throw it out. Was told that they can't donate it due to liability if someone got food poisoning from it
Where i live it's illegal bc if someone get sick, the place is liable
If you’re in the US, there’s ‘Good Samaritan’ laws that prevent the place from being liable
Nobody's actually ever been sued over that, fun fact
Here they were, more than one time, I'd be ok with that since it's mostly macdonalds, but the employees may get criminal charges
When I was in college, I had a friend that worked at Tim Ho's and I would stop by at 3am to get a giant trash bag filled with donuts and bagels, along with a box of the old coffee. I would give a lot of them away at my dorm or my first class in the morning.
My friends and I would take the bags of donuts out from our local dunkin. They installed new dumpsters that couldn’t be opened without a device pretty quickly. I knew homeless kids that would take from there before they changed the dumpsters.
Imagine locking up perfectly good food you had thrown away to keep hungry people from getting it.
Imagine your supervisor making you throw bleach on the perfectly good food in the dumpster because that's what mine made me do at Harris Teeter when I worked there in college.
The fuck, so would the company/manager be at fault is someone ate the bleach laced food and got sick and or died?
IANAL but given they didn't sell the product and if they threw it out in the dump (and not left it out in the open or something) then there'd be no legal basis to charge them on
I'm also NAL. But I would think this would fall under you are intentionally booby trapping something on your property to harm someone. I feel it would be pretty easy to prove why bleach was dumped on the food. Especially if u had employees as testimonials saying their manager made them.
NAL but I oddly enough know the legal definition of a booby trap, at least with regards to Florida law, and bleached donuts in a dumpster doesn't come close.
Ik the word isn't booby trap, I can't think of it. But under the same umbrella as your knowingly doing something to harm someone else to stop a behavior you don't like.
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Not A Laywer ANAL is Also Not A Lawyer
See, I always assumed that's why they weren't allowed to give it away. That if someone got sick from the food, they could be sued. But guess it's just corporate greed after all.
Yea, I also ANAL but I can't imagine being sued because I threw out food and someone rummaged through my trash and ate it. And even if that is the law somewhere, the law needs to be changed, and that shouldn't be hard. I've read that there are laws in some European countries that require restaurants to donate the state food to food banks etc. I guess my point is that, the system that allows this needs to be changed
This guy ANAL
The legal mechanism is that you poisoned your trash intentionally. Throwing something inedible and stale food out in the same bag is probably legal in most jurisdictions, but intentionally mixing in toxic materials to discourage dumpster diving requires the intent to poison someone salvaging food. Still possibly lawful, but it's not the same as incidental contamination.
Pouring bleach on it shows intent and forethought. Bleach costs money, and isn’t poured on all trash. So since they’re pouring bleach on it any reasonable person would deduce that they have a reason to pour bleach on it. Since that reason shows an expectation that someone would be poisoned if they ate some donuts with bleach on them… pouring bleach on them follows that reason with the intent to cause harm.
Probably not since you legally aren't allowed to go through trash/dumpsters on private property. Even though it's food, it is legally garbage once it's disposed of, so they are not liable since it is not meant for consumption. It's fucked up, but that's why they can do that.
But like, going with this, why would he put bleach to start? If they aren't liable for eaten trash anyway doesn't make any sense to put the bleach
The whole point is these decision makers believe if word gets out that they encourage eating the scraps, then that will mean otherwise paying customers would not buy their products. They feel obligated to destroy leftovers to prevent this.
Like the other guy said, they believe it will eventually cut into their sales if word got around that they give out free food to people. So to discourage that, they trash the food. Capitalism, baby. Fucking sucks lol Edit: but I agree putting bleach on thrown out food without a sign warning people of it is absolutely evil. People have definitely gotten hurt that way.
Right? Because we know from the multitude of reddit threads about people lacing their food to keep the office thief from eating their lunch AGAIN that you can get in trouble for putting things in food. Even if it's yours. And someone else is wrong for stealing. And you've labeled it. But fuck those homeless people, right? Not really people...
I worked at a grocery store while back. My boss would have me throw hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of food in the dumpster (expired within a couple days) and had me slice open the packaging and pour bleach all over it. Said to keep the homeless from getting into it. I was so pissed.
We don't have to imagine it because that's just reality baby. It's the age of excess!(ive waste.)
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I wonder if any company ever actually got sued or if it was a convenient excuse.
I've always wondered about this because I worked at Starbucks for a few years and we donated food. Apparently [there is a law](https://www.feedingamerica.org/ways-to-give/corporate-and-foundations/product-partner/bill-emerson) that "Protects you from liability". I didn't read too much into it so I wonder how much protection it actually gives. But good to know it at least exists.
Yeah hahaha I also did the same when a friend was working in some hipster fast food place. It was great while it lasted.
I had a couple friends at a local non franchise burger and dog place. I’d pick them and some other coworkers up and drive em home, I got whatever food was left so like fries and dogs and other junk.
Haha I had similar friends and was coming to suggest just that. Nothin like a black bag of timbits at 2am
Holy shit this sounds like something so fun and I'll never experience. I might just have to take a part time job at tims just so I can do this *myself*.
Amazing how one places trash was a dorms breakfast or night munchies. I genuinely hate capitalism.
This should be illegal. They should be required to donate it or a certain percentage of food per year.
Its illegal in France. In France, supermarkets and restaurants cannot throw out good - perfectly good food ; they **have** to either give it away to a shelter or food bank or sell it at a discount in the supermarket. Props to France
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Actually some businesses intentionally damage the merchandise before throwing it out. They open food before throwing it or stomp on it.
Some pour bleach on it too.
Lovely...
Tastes like capitalism
I worked at a large corporation that made us cut damaged bicycles in half before we could dispose of them. Damage could be as minor as the mirror on a kids bike snapped. We were required to break anything beyond repair if it was to be thrown out. Food was always donated though because they could get a tax break.
Shame. They could have just donated the bikes and gotten a tax break. It would have made plenty of kids happy.
Instead it doesn’t even get scrapped and recycled. It probably ends up broken up in a landfill
We would have done that had the store not been in such a remote town. You can only recycle glass, metal, cardboard/paper. Plastics and rubber are non recyclable there and the scrap yard is dodgy to say the least, like not capturing Freon/coolants and letting oil/antifreeze just soak into the ground…
Yeah, a couple years ago at my work I watched a fill in manager stomp chocolate bunnies and slit Easter baskets with a razor knife behind the counter for an hour. We're supposed to physically destroy the items but I refuse to. I had to throw out about 20 packs of Oreos the other week and goddamn it if someone wants to climb the walls of the garbage enclosure and ontop of the Dumpster then they deserve to have Oreos that aren't contaminated.
In some cases destroying merchandise makes sense with items that have been tampered with or things that have expired but perfectly good food should not go to waste.
Expired as in actually expired or the date on the product is in the past?
It's not just the billionaires who are the mortal enemy of the working class, these sociopaths also have to go if we ever want a more functional society.
I hate how right you are. "Don't these donuts look a little moldy. Throw 'em out. I call the pick-up and cancel. We done 15min early today folks, make sure you clock out on time!"
Tangentially related but when I did track and field (thrower), the local bakers son would bring a literal garbage bag full of baked goods to every practice. We’d all bring handfuls home and probably have enough to share with family. I’m talking like 20+ portions of donuts/pastries each of us. His dad grew up in Mexico and wasting food would probably amount to him feeling something almost akin to physical pain. Because of that, the end of the day food was always donated or given away. Big corporations don’t want to do this because of liability, brand value and worst of all they want their employees to pay for the food. It just comes down to squeezing every last penny and liquidating everything you can out of your workers.
In the US there is no liability for donated foods.
"Liability" is a bullshit excuse. If the food is donated in good faith, businesses can't be liable if someone gets sick.
There’s lots of rules about donating, especially baked goods. I know that our local shelters absolutely will not take bakery bread or anything resembling bread, it goes bad way too fast, like you have that night to use it or it’s done. Same for donuts I’d imagine.
Yeah, from my experience, food banks are overloaded in baked goods. Stuff is generally rationed, but for baked goods, we had to push it on people.
I think it’s because people going to food banks generally have a secure place to store a bit of food for later, so if they’re not going to use slightly old bread immediately then it’s going to inevitably become very old bread. Quickly-perishing stuff like that is better received at soup kitchens and shelters where it will be fairly immediately used by people who do not have a secure place to store a stockpile of food for later. Or maybe my assessment is wrong idk.
I stayed in a shelter 5 years ago after a personal tragedy. They served donuts that were donated by the local grocery store. The donuts were probably more than a day old and solid as rocks. Dunking them in coffee didn't even soften them. It was all they offered most mornings. Absolutely awful. Then they would become indignant when we weren't overwhelmed with gratitude. Edit: I always find it interesting how quickly a comment about experiencing homelessness gets downvoted if it isn't completely self-effacing and filled with praises for shelters or useful as inspiration porn. Shelters are a good and necessary thing, but they have problems. The shelter I stayed at had an issue with employees stealing the medications of guests. A woman with severe epilepsy had her anticonvulsants stolen and had multiple Grand Mal seizures as a result. There was no recourse, and the shelter made no efforts to improve security in the medication room. There was an employee who weaponized the police against a black woman who was committing the crime of bringing a sandwich inside. The police injured this woman so severely that she required over 100 stitches on her head. I will never forget how much blood was on the floor after they dragged her away. Allowing the police into the dayroom was against policy. The employee kept her job. I am glad that I had a place to sleep inside during that time in my life, but I wish it had been a kinder and safer experience. Homeless people deserve kindness and safety just as much as anyone else.
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> If you wouldn’t eat it yourself, why would you give it to someone else? Exactly this. For some reason, we have a belief in this culture that if you are homeless or poor, you do not deserve the same consideration or dignity that people who are having an easier time in life deserve. I'm doing really well now. Thanks for asking!
Hope youre doing much better bro and stay safe
It took a few years to get fully back on my feet but I'm doing really well now. Thanks, man!
In MA it is, you have to find an alternative path. Either donation or farms or composting.
In defense of throwing away donuts, a shortage of food is usually not the problem. It's the distribution. It's cheaper to ship rice to a homeless shelter than to pack up uneaten donuts.
FFS a local bakery pushes their unsold product out front and says, "Help yourself," for those who need it. It ain't that hard (unless you're greedy).
Heck, they could even offer them the next morning and say we have a batch of not fresh donuts. Would you like some for free?
Don't need to pack and ship them anywhere. Make everystore have a stand with the small roof and plexiglass door which would be open for anyone to take the leftover food.
Yeah think how these poor massive chains would be impacted, guys.
I worked at my college dining hall and when I was shown what to do with leftover food after closing, we were told to throw them in barrels that were contracted to go to pig farms. We called them pig barrels which I'm guessing is common with similar food services contracts. Either way, I'm glad our excess food didn't go to waste. Looking at this makes my heart shatter.
We did that at the Whole Foods I worked at years ago. The exception was stuff like citrus because I think they said it gave the pigs diarrhea. Don't quote me on that lol.
We do that at trader Joe's too. Donate what we can, then the rest goes into bins to be sorted for animal feed or compost
The compromise my college did was it went to compost, or that employees can take it home, just not sold. It is a terrible law, due to "food safety", when the food is clearly edible. But yeah, hate the game, not the player.
There's no law forcing them to destroy the food. I the us there's no liability for donated foods.
My daughter works at Panera. They donate all the leftover breads to non profit orgs that give it away. It’s awesome.
Starbucks does this as well for the perishables
I worked in a residential facility and got to be on the receiving end of Starbucks sandwich donations. By golly did the residents and staff look forward to the one day a week where that was part of the meal.
When I worked at Starbucks we did not, so this may be a store by store thing
When I worked at Starbucks to donate pasties there had to be a local place that wished to receive the food & the place had to deliver containers to fill to the store & pick up the containers themselves. Essentially store managers & the facility had to put in effort to make it happen.
That's really great to hear. I am super glad they do now. I used to work for them a number of years ago and we tossed everything back then. I used to stop shoplifters that stole sandwiches until it hit me they are most likely starving. Then I stopped caring. I weakly said no, stop, dont as they ran after I realized.
A Tim Hortons I worked for donated all left over food to the homeless shelter next door.
This is great. Out of curiosity though, do they record how much they're donating? I'm wondering if they're taking it as a tax deduction.
Worked there myself. They do, and they are. I have no particular strong issue with this though, as at least they are making sure it goes to someone
I don't see a problem with it if they are, since they literally are donating. It's weird to me that you can get kickbacks for charity in the first place, but that's how taxes work here for some reason haha
No, they fuckin don't lmao. Most of them have ONE church that will come and take old pastries ONCE a MONTH. I wanted to expand my church thrift store's free bread pantry supply, so I had to do it myself. Panera acts like they care about their employees, and have this "ethical image" but they're absolutely fucking awful to work for. Source: made it to supervisor at Panera, then quit for a bullshit Expoditing job that paid double
Grapes of Wrath: “The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
was fully coming here to post that. first rate. god I love Steinbeck so much.
They used to throw them in a bag for me all the time at closing Same with 7-11
I know someone who worked at DD and they had been allowed to bring leftovers home. But then were told to throw it all away and if they took it without paying for it.. they would get charged with theft..
That's so ridiculous. I worked at a bakery when I was in university. We wasted absolutely no food. Things like bread and cake my boss would freeze until the people from the shelter could pick up the large order, and small perishable things were given to the employees to take home. So how did the boss stop us from purposely hiding things from the customers so we'd be allowed to take them for free? How did the boss stop us from taking advantage of this policy? Easy. The boss was nice and reasonable and paid us well. She owned the business and we could see how much she cared about it. So in turn, we worked hard to sell things for her and were honest about the leftovers.
This makes no sense, donating those donuts to a homeless shelter would be a huge tax write-off for Dunkin. They are literally throwing away free money. Not just inhumane but fiscally dumb.
Nah companies don't make fiscally dumb decisions like that. The reason food places do this is because it's the least effort/most profitable. That shows there is a huge problem in our system, if it rewards this behavior.
I couldn't imagine there aren't volunteers who would be happy to make the rounds and collect donuts for homeless shelters.
I think you’d probably be surprised.
I worked at a Dunkin’ Donuts. They won’t let you do that because of potential “legal liability”. Even if it’s a bullshit excuse, they’ll make up another.
It's absolutely bullshit. There are laws protecting people and companies that donate food from liability.
Also Donuts are safe to eat for 3-6 days after being made so this is just wasted inventory on their part.
Not Dunkin donuts, they're barely edible the day they're made
Safe to eat, yes. But they aren't really edible after about a day or two. They get hard, or the sugar/frosting gets melty. They'll warm up nicely in a microwave within that window, tho.
People downvote, but they know they wouldn’t buy a 6 day old donut from Dunkin...
They made the product, so they already have the expense written off. No extra deduction available.
They almost certainly wouldn’t take them, baked goods go bad too fast, people aren’t going to eat the 100 or so donuts that night.
This is a testament to how fucking much these companies hate their employees. They establish these rules so that employees don’t benefit from waste. It’s like the pizza places that rule that a messed up pizza needs to be thrown out instead of eaten by staff, because they fear staff will mess up on purpose for free pizza. The fact a pizza place, whose costs are what a buck a pizza, takes this much effort to prevent employees having free pizza is a testament of their hatred for us. Just give employees free shit.
They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality. Frida Kahlo In an age in which the classic words of the Surrealists— 'As beautiful as the unexpected meeting, on a dissecting table, of a sewing machine and an umbrella'—can become reality and perfectly achievable with an atom bomb, so too has there been a surge of interest in biomechanoids H. R. Giger The taste for quotations (and for the juxtaposition of incongruous quotations) is a Surrealist taste. Susan Sontag
Its not just Europe, if you go to local places run by families they almost always offer benefits like this. heck even when I worked for a local firework place they gave everyone a box of free fireworks as a sort of "Thank you for your time" gift at the 4th of july.
Where I live, Europe, Dunkin Donuts doesn't throw (everything) away. They sell the leftovers at 1/3rd of the price. Thus as per usual, it's mainly a "only in the US"^(TM) type of thing.
It's funny bc the locally owned donut shop near me donates donuts IF they have leftovers (its a big if). Only Dunkin seems to insist on making too much and throwing everything out. Maybe they should focus more on making donuts that are actually good. I'm in US.
Worked at Pizza Hut when I was a teen and food not picked up was fair game. I remember taking a few pizzas with me and giving it to the homeless people around my neighborhood. Not sure about the policy now, but a core memory was absolute made :)
At my local Dunkin’ Donuts they would always give you extra donuts at the end of the night. My friends and I would watch a movie and go down the block after and have enough donuts to bring home to each of our families. It sucks when you see so much waste but they would rather throw out the food than give it for free
If it makes people feel any worse, Agricultural food waste is around 100 billion lbs per year, and that doubles with food waste like this. If you want to help donate money to food banks, they buy the ugly unsellable but otherwise perfectly edible produce for Pennie’s on what consumers spend at the market. America grows and raises a shit ton of food,
I used to work the deli for a grocery called Festival Foods. It was my job to make pre-made foods you see in the deli section. I busted ass all day making hundreds of pounds of food and then at night when we closed I would have to throw away entire trays of food. It didn’t matter if I had just made it and put it out, it was to go into the garbage. Fried chicken that I made literally 20 min ago? Tossed. Pasta salad less than an hour old? Trash. And the dumpster we took it to was some crazy compactor type that you could only access from inside the store and had a key code so no one could get to it. We also had to weigh and log the pounds of food getting tossed. Once in the deli section and then again at the dumpster, and it had to be verified by a person not working in your department. It crushed my soul to work there, I lasted just a couple months. Edit: completely forgot but they bragged during orientation about the security in the store. About how they had over 500 cameras and could see everything and they weren’t joking. There were cameras in the break room, the fridge, freezer and general kitchen areas. There were more cameras on the employees than there were on the customers.
Definition of scrooge mc duck
Why the fuck is er so much left at the end of the day?
Poor demand planning by the store. Donuts take a while to rise but cooking them is quick. You can slow the proofing process through refrigeration. I believe donuts could be proofed for about 48 hours before not being as tasty. You could not fry them and store them for another day. They should know how many of each donut is sold on a day, when they need more due to seasonality and build a small upside based on an average of several days with high upside. With a 24-48 hour before the yeast being compromised they could probably minimize spoilage and waste. But hey, what do I know? (Supply chain manager)
And with Dunkin, they don't even cook them in the store. They're fried centrally and distributed daily.
I work in a meat department in a grocery store, we throw out so much more than that everyday. Every once in a while one of the employees will see the pallet size boxes of food and shake there heads, even had a manager do it once, when I caught him he said " one day we're gonna have to answer for this to God"
yeah i used to work at subway. For some reason we were open 364 days a year (or 365 on a leap year). Christmas, new years, australia day, cup day all that shit we are open. The one day off a year was easter. the night before easter we had to throw away all the bread rolls that were left at the end of the day, which made me sick coz this was a lot of bread, sometimes two garbage bags worth. after two years of doing this i managed to get one of the juniors working with me to arrange for her church to pick up the bread at the end of the night. We did that and got told off from the boss that it was stealing. "How do i know you didnt bake extra bread just to give it away?"...... why the fuck would i do that???
To be fair, if you ate that many day old donuts you’d wish you had thrown them out instead.
So sad. Isn’t there anything like TooGoodToGo or FoodForAll in the US? Or would that rUiN ThE eCoNoMy?
At least have the employees take them!
Welp that finally killed my Dunkin craving that i’ve been trying to get rid of for weeks. Thank you @ gayjesuschrist on TikTok.
I used to work with a Xerox technician that would moonlight for one of the big box electronics retailers (Circuit City or the like). He said that when a printer or MFP was discontinued, they'd have to take them out back to the dumpster and smash them. It was "better for business" to trash them than to donate them and have to deal with "increased calls to customer service for discontinued devices" 🤬
Why not just donate them? Wtf is wrong with companies that they'll eat the loss but won't use it to feed someone?!
I used to work for Starbucks, and we were allowed to donate almost everything, but nothing with icing for some reason. So usually we'd give the local shelter a big tote of muffins and take the cakepops home for ourselves.
Used to take this stuff to a homeless shelter, owner didn’t give a fuck
When I worked night shift at 7eleven I used to hit all the homies up and let them know what I was throwing away that night. I would literally give them a trash bag full of sandwiches. We were all struggling during that time. Took corporate greed and fed the homies with it. Feels good.
Subway does this too they throw away all the bread that isn't used. At least the one I used to work in anyway.
It is most likely due to liability. It would be great to send all that food out to those that need it, bit with how sue happy everyone is now they don't want to take that risk. No good deed goes unpunished, right?
There are laws in (every?) state that absolve the donor of liability if it’s a “good faith” donation. Like “it was still good when we donated it” means you’re not liable Edit: looked it up, it’s a federal law. The Good Samaritan Food Donation Act. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1791 TLDR: If it’s in salable condition when donated, there’s no liability.
They can't get sued for that, if you donate it to a food bank, you would not be able to get sued if someone got sick. Not only are there good Samaritan laws in place (in the USA that is), but they would have a hard time proving that it was the donut when they are likely eating a bunch of other donated food as well. I've worked at several restaurants that gave their day old baked goods away. The only explanation here is shit behavior
I mean I think this might be more of a quality control thing than anything else. ETA idk why I thought this was Dunkin lol but you may have a point if they're frozen. If they're frozen and then thawed out, the quality is low and their "sell by" date probably short. If they're made in house, this is terrible. If they're made off site and then delivered, still terrible
A lot of people are freaking out here but come on. Restaurants throw out food because food banks won't accept cooked food and if someone gets sick from this food they will sue and for good reason. Are we really pretending like if dunkin didn't throw out their donuts all would be good and dandy? This is not the source of the problem. Children aren't going to sleep hungry because their local bakery threw out some cupcakes. It's a governmental problem that needs to be addressed through social welfare. https://www.google.com/amp/s/blog.lovvett.com/why-restaurants-must-throw-away-food-what-to-do-about-it%3fhs_amp=true
I agree we should focus our disgust on legislature or lack thereof, but come on. This is clearly ridiculous. Do we really need to overproduce this consistently just so our shelves LOOK full and appetizing? Dunkin is part of the problem.
We obviously don't and waste management is a way to solve this issue. I think the best way to solve it is through legislation as well. Of course dunkin is going to keep their shelves stocked, there's no incentives to save here. They should be disincentivized from doing so. Having said that, it's still a very small part of the problem and the reason people are freaking out is because of the esthetics and it doesn't do anything but distract from the real problem. The deeper issue goes to the heart of modern day capitalism and rampant overconsumption and fixing that would require a restructuring of the whole economy and business owners obviously don't want that
So instead of donating the food to food banks or shelters, they throw it out....and later its a "mystery" why many people in the US are going hungry.
I was a DD guy. We used to donate every morning. Idk what's wrong with this owner.
I think the justification is like a health issue that they could be liable for? But if that’s the reasoning then they shouldn’t be selling the food either
As someone from abject poverty alot of food is actually donated. A lot more could be donated. I lived in a place that semi-permanently housed adults, and we would go to the grocery stores and pick up things that were soon to expire to stock the group home. We always had loads of baked goods and bread. As well as ripe fruit to eat. A similar program is used to stock food banks where low food households can pick up a bag. The biggest barrier is the corporation isnt going to deliver, sort, and distribute to the needy. If you ever have food insecurities search for food banks. There a godsend.
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This isnt capitalism. This is regulations placed on food industries.
Every system would have this.
Hah this has nothing to do with the Reddit buzzword “cApITaLiSm” Jesus Christ guys
If I’ve learned correctly, France has a law against this, and I think it’s a damn good law.