Starbucks to donate all unsold food

Starbucks Corp. announced a major initiative to help the nation’s neediest citizens.



The coffee giant is launching FoodShare, a program to donate all leftover ready-to-eat meals from its 7,600 U.S. company-operated stores to food banks. In the first year alone, the program will be able to provide nearly 5 million meals, according to company estimates.



But Starbucks has even bigger plans. It intends to scale this program over the next five years and eventually donate 100% of its leftover food from participating company-operated U.S. stores. That amounts to almost 50 million meals by 2021.



Starbucks is collaborating on the program with the Food Donation Connection, which manages food donation programs for food service companies, and Feeding America, a national network of food banks. Using refrigerated vans, the FDC will pick up the food each day at the Starbucks locations and deliver it to Feeding America, which will redistribute it to those in need.



Starbucks has been partnering with FDC since 2010, donating pastries after the items can no longer be sold to customers. The retailer has been investing in research and quality assurance testing to develop a way to safely donate fresh food and worked with FDC to develop a safe process to add perishable food to the pick-up.



“We focused on maintaining the temperature, texture and flavor of the surplus food, so when it reached a person in need, they could safely enjoy it,” said Jane Maly, brand manager, Starbucks Food team.



Starbucks credited its associates with coming up with its new food donation effort.



“Like many of our social impact initiatives, the innovation and inspiration comes from our partners who are volunteering in and contributing to their communities,” said John Kelly, senior vice president, Starbucks Global Responsibility, Community and Public Policy. “They saw the need for us to do more, and find a way to use our scale to bring more nourishing and ready-to-eat meals to those in need.”



In addition to helping the needy, the program will divert food surplus from landfills, furthering Starbucks goal to minimize its environmental footprint and inspire other companies to do the same. With an estimated 70 billion pounds of food waste in America each year, according to Feeding America, Starbucks hopes to encourage other businesses to put a focus on food rescue.