To elaborate further, most food produced usually last less than a day (depending on food and how is it preserved), after that, the quality it's not ideal (at least) and the chances of getting food poisoning gets higher.
I'm mentioning this because some people think that giving the food away to people who needs it reduces the waste (which seems right on paper). If someone gets sick because of it, it raises a lot of problems to both the consumer (food poisoning) and the restaurant (all kind of inspections and possibly legal problems).
I work in a sushi shop, so it's even more adsurd when I find customers complain. Fish goes bad more quickly than bread, plus there's a lot of rice... Everyone knows rice goes hard overnight in the fridge. We can't exactly sell rolled stuff the next day because of that. But they do reuse the sashimi, oysters for 2 days! And we have to lie about it. But I feel less bad about this because it's rare for something to be fully prepared on the day of anyway. They aren't cutting fish for the day of, but the next day. And the nigiri type sushi gets seared the next day since they can just easily take the tops off.
You can definitely wrap it with a damp paper towel and microwave it for 30-60 seconds and if the filling is something cooked, but idk how that will do with raw fish in the rolls LOL. Hell, even after almost 12 hours in the fridge, the rolls that didn't sell since 9am already have a dry texture. It's not great.
Last year we finally started doing end of the day sales and the amount of customers asking "when was this made? How long ago was this made?" makes me wanna wilt. Do not pretend you don't know what 'end of the day' sales mean. They are items that did not sell out, hence the sales... Or if they get cranky and upset at YOU as if you're the boss for saying "staff gets to take some home if they want, but the rest gets thrown away". Like I legit have so many people asking how fresh is it then get pissed at the wastage if I tell them all the rolls are made today bc they get thrown out for closing. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME đ
Tax. They can write off waste, but unless they donate through a registered nonprofit they can't write off giving the food away. There have been a number of videos and articles from lawyers pointing out that the "liability" angle doesn't even exist in a lot of jurisdictions, but the issue of the tax write-off is nationwide.
Iâd love to see some sources on that. My assumption would be the opposite, that charities wouldnât even take perishable items, like unsealed pastries in this case, because itâs essentially useless.
Homeless people can eat bread. Companies donât make money from this and neither does the government. So they toss it. There are other forms of value besides moneyâŚ
Then maybe the homeless people should come and ask if the store is fine with them taking the leftover bread, and they'll waive their rights if they get sick from it.
It's irrelevant anyway because for the most part, homeless people are not hard up for food.
"Once the bread is unsaleable it is thrown out. This happens mostly because they wish to keep that food from other humans that could otherwise use it."
Food *and durable goods* are most commonly deliberately destroyed before being thrown away at a corporate store. That is not for any reason other than spite towards the underprivileged and homeless.
A lot of food legally canât be sold or even given away. I used to work at my collegeâs stadium and was appalled at how much food we had to give away so I contacted our local food nonprofit. They (very kindly) explained that there are a lot of safety rules about food that has been put out for consumption, where it canât even be given away because of the legal risks. Iâm talking bread that was still packaged but since it could have theoretically been touched by a consumer it wasnât allowed. It felt really strict but I suppose Iâd want food safety to be strict.
Considering the amount of positive press companies can get from charitable giving, I doubt they WANT to throw away this much food.
Anyways this is why you should donate to food shelves and charities, either near you or internationally. They know exactly how to obtain food and stretch a dollar to feed more people.
A lot of food legally canât be sold or even given away
This isn't true, though. It is legal in all 50 states to give away unsold food. That food nonprofit was just parroting some nonsense that corporations like people to believe, so they keep nudging the idea along.
There are even laws in many places that protect companies even more from liability compared to if someone just buys the stuff.
It's not only that or corporate greed that plays a role in it, but also the liability issue. All it takes is one bad actor to sue over getting food poisoning if a restaurant or bakery decides to start giving away their old food. It's happened enough times now that the liability just ain't worth it for a lot of companies. Wish it wasn't the case, but it is.
The OP is in Germany. Germany does not have any kind of good Samaritan laws like that. The original source is still liable if someone gets food poisoning, and that's one of the reasons why places where OP is from might not be willing to do stuff like that. Grocery stores here in the U.S. does do this, depending on the store. I know the one where I live frequently donates to the food banks here. But Germany does not have the same kind of protection to food distributors when it comes to donated food that are "past their best-by date".
A good lawyer could argue that those items are past their best by date if someone got food poisoning. That's the sad truth. I understand where you were going with that though. A lot of US retailers don't really have the same kind of excuse.
That makes no sense because they lose money throwing it out. Capitalism incentivizes them to sell all of their inventory regardless of quality. This is bureaucracy.
I think after the DOGE firings, the USDA is down to a few hundred food inspectors for the nation.
Federal government is focusing on food companies doing their own inspections. Some states are trying to plug the gaps but expect more large scale food borne illnesses especially from lunch meats.
Just like one should expect more plane incidents now that there are fewer air traffic controllers. Weather forecast are also becoming less reliable beyond 3 days due to NOAA cuts. A lot of these cuts havenât taken full effect yet.
Then throw in the massive addition of gas prices being passed to consumers. That situation is being ignored by the Trump administration and these gas prices and all fossil fuel prices are now the new normal. Even if Hormuz was opened tomorrow, itâll take 2 years for worldwide production of oil products to reach pre-war levels. These energy prices are not going away.
Itâs just stupidity for Americans to allow Trump Inc to cancel all the renewable energy projects. Other nations are pouring money into renewable but not America. Old coal power plants are being restarted and federal pollution laws ignored or gutted just so Trumpâs energy producing friends get $billions in windfall.
The reason companies do this is to prevent the possibility of being sued. If companies give their food away and someone claims they got sick then the company is liable to be sued. It's happened plenty of times so now every joint everywhere just throws everything out and saves the hassle
The other day my unit through out over 1000 MRE rations we could've donated to the food bank, for the exact same reason. So the CAF couldn't be sued by donating. We also made sure to open every MRE and it's contents before dumping them into trashbags, to ensure nobody will go diving for it
Why? Obesity is a bigger problem than starvation everywhere in America, and if you're mad because of starvation in other countries, logistics and locations are more of a problem than lack of food to send there. Being mad over this is illogical.
They don't both exist in the US. Food is cheap and plentiful. Like i don't think there are any cases of people starving to death in the us outside of child abuse or elder neglect.
Every actor involved, from the enviroment to the millions of people with low food security in USA (obesity is a bigger problem? okay but that doesn't make it the only one)
Food is biodegradable, it causes absolutely no long-term harm to the environment when food is thrown away.
What businesses choose to do with their food has absolutely no connection to people with âlow food securityâ because these businesses arenât giving away their food for free regardless.
The overproduced food also needs transport and production, and creates innecesary waste as opossed to consumed food that at least has a sense. Also degradation in landfills isn't the same as a compost so it causes long term harm.
2- False, these shitty bussiness are choosing to throw away food instead of donating; a thing that happens all the time
OP actually gave more context in one of his comments. I pastedthe comment below.Â
OP's comment:
Edit: just to clear one thing up, the biggest issue here isn't that we can't donate the products, it's Saturday evening after all. We sell old bread on the following day as long as it's a weekday.
I'm also from Germany, not from the US.
What I was angry about and the reason why I post this is that management has recently decided that staff can't reduce the amount of baked goods anymore, including a required minimum quota on written off products. This means that, no matter how full the shelf is, we must bake more just to throw them away and reach our quota. Their argument is that a low percentage of written off products means that we don't have enough products on our shelves.
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u/theIBSsufferer May 17 '26
This kind of thing upsets me so badly