Fresh Rescue Champions Project Final Report

The U.S. retail sector generated approximately 4.99 million tons of surplus food in 2022, sending 34.5% to the landfill or for incineration, and donating only 19.5% (ReFED, 2023). Retailers recognize that the food they discard could be helping community members in need to live better, healthier lives. They recognize the considerable environmental benefits and cost savings they could achieve by improving donation and reducing waste. Yet, the solutions are not always simple, and regardless of the plans set at corporate headquarters, success often rests on the day-to-day actions of frontline workers.

Through Albertsons Companies’ Recipe for Change initiative, the company is working to accelerate food donations and reduce food waste to landfills (Albertsons Companies, n.d.). Within that initiative, the Fresh Rescue food donation program aims to divert high quality food that might otherwise be discarded to donation in local communities. This report describes a novel approach to improving food rescue, leading with the expertise of frontline workers. The Fresh Rescue Champions Project asks: how might unlocking the expertise, creativity, and motivation of supermarket employees transform food donation? How can worker-engaged approaches further benefit retailers and employees? To address these questions, we convened a cohort of 10 frontline employees from four Albertsons Companies’ grocery retail stores in the Mid- Atlantic area (henceforth, Fresh Rescue Champions, or Champions) to co-design a set of strategies to improve the food donation program. These four stores were selected to participate in the study specifically because they were either not donating or donating very little on a regular basis. The project is rooted in the idea that when given the opportunity to think closely about needs, frontline workers can utilize their lived experience and expertise to develop strategies that both differ and complement those developed by others.

The Fresh Rescue Champions project was led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) Center for Creative Impact (formerly the Center for Social Design), in partnership with Albertsons Companies, and with funding from the National Science Foundation as part of the Multiscale RECIPES for Sustainable Food Systems research network. This report provides an overview of the project and the four resulting strategies to improve food donation in grocery retail stores.