Nothing Wasted: How Food Rescue Feeds the Community

Food rescue is the collection and redistribution of safe, high-quality surplus food that might otherwise go to waste. Food Bank of the Rockies works with retailers, farms, manufacturers, distributors, volunteers, and Hunger Relief Partners to redirect this food to individuals and families experiencing food insecurity across Colorado and Wyoming.

In fiscal year 2025, Food Bank of the Rockies’ Food Rescue Program redirected 49 million pounds of surplus food from retailers and suppliers to neighbors. Rescued food accounted for more than half of the food distributed by the organization, and 28% of it was fresh produce.

This collaborative network does more than provide food. It helps retailers and suppliers put usable products to their highest purpose, expands access to nutritious groceries, and keeps food and the resources used to produce it from being wasted.

Key Takeaways

• Food rescue redirects safe, high-quality surplus food to people instead of allowing it to go to waste.
• Food Bank of the Rockies works with more than 880 retail and food-business donor locations.
• In fiscal year 2025, the Food Rescue Program rescued 49 million pounds of food.
• Twenty-eight percent of the food rescued during that fiscal year was fresh produce.
• More than 700 Hunger Relief Partners and 70 mobile pantries help make rescued food available to neighbors.
• Food rescue also helps reduce the environmental impact associated with discarded food.

What Is Food Rescue?

Food rescue involves collecting surplus food that is still safe and suitable for people to eat and redistributing it through food banks, food pantries, community kitchens, and other hunger-relief organizations.

Surplus food can become available for many reasons. A retailer may have more of an item than it can sell, a product may be approaching a quality-based date label, or a business may be changing packaging or seasonal inventory. Produce may also have cosmetic imperfections that do not affect its quality or safety.

Food rescue is different from distributing food that is spoiled or unsafe. Donated items are handled, sorted, stored, and evaluated according to applicable food-safety and quality requirements before they are made available to community members.

With the level of need for food support remaining high, Food Bank of the Rockies and pantries across the region are doing everything they can to provide food to neighbors facing hunger. To source this much food, food banks like Food Bank of the Rockies “rescue” food that might otherwise go uneaten.

Our Food Rescue Program has saved millions of pounds of surplus food from going to waste by bringing together a wide-ranging network of community partners to collect and distribute it to local individuals and families experiencing food insecurity.

Food Rescue by the Numbers

During fiscal year 2025, Food Bank of the Rockies’ Food Rescue Program included:

• More than 880 retail and food-business donor locations
• 49 million pounds of surplus food rescued
• 28% of rescued food consisting of fresh produce
• More than 700 Hunger Relief Partners
• More than 70 mobile pantries serving communities across the region

These figures demonstrate the scale of the network required to move surplus food efficiently from businesses to neighbors who can use it.

How Does the Food Rescue Program Work?

Food rescue depends on collaboration across nearly every part of the food supply chain.

Food Bank of the Rockies works with nonprofit Hunger Relief Partners, retailers, food distributors, farms and ranches, manufacturers, drivers, staff members, and volunteers. Together, they collect, sort, store, and distribute surplus food throughout Colorado and Wyoming.

The process generally works in the following way:

1. Surplus food becomes available. Retailers, farms, manufacturers, and distributors identify safe food that they cannot sell or use.
2. The food is collected. Food Bank of the Rockies drivers or approved Hunger Relief Partners pick up the food directly from participating businesses. Other donations are transported to one of the Food Bank’s distribution centers.
3. Products are inspected and sorted. Staff members and volunteers evaluate, itemize, and repackage donated products as needed.
4. Food is stored safely. Shelf-stable, refrigerated, and frozen items are kept under appropriate storage conditions.
5. Hunger Relief Partners receive the food. Partners may collect food directly from retailers, place orders through Food Bank of the Rockies, or receive scheduled deliveries.
6. Food reaches neighbors. Rescued products are made available free of charge through food pantries, mobile distributions, community kitchens, and other programs.

Our Food Rescue community partner network includes nonprofit organizations such as The Action Center in Lakewood, SECORCares in Parker, Joy’s Kitchen in Lakewood, and Metro Caring in Denver, as well as more than 70 mobile pantries.

These partners receive food from hundreds of local Donation Partners, including retailers such as Walmart, Target, King Soopers, City Market, Sprouts, and Starbucks; food distributors such as Shamrock Foods, Amazon, KeHE, and US Foods; farms and ranches; and manufacturers such as Mountain View Foods and Pepperidge Farm.

Our Hunger Relief Partners can send their own drivers to pick up surplus food directly from select retailers or place an online order through Food Bank of the Rockies. We also send our own program drivers to collect donations from across the food supply chain.

Once the food reaches a distribution center, volunteers help sort, itemize, and repackage it so it is ready for pickup or delivery.

Why Does Good Food Become Surplus?

Food can become surplus without being spoiled or unsafe. Common reasons include:

• Retail overstock
• Seasonal or promotional inventory changes
• Products approaching quality-based date labels
• Packaging or branding changes
• Canceled orders
• Manufacturing overruns
• Produce with cosmetic imperfections
• Items that no longer meet a retailer’s preferred size or appearance standards

Without a coordinated food-rescue system, businesses may not have the transportation, staffing, storage, or community connections needed to redistribute these products quickly.

Food Bank of the Rockies helps fill that gap by coordinating pickups, transportation, sorting, storage, ordering, and distribution.

Is Rescued Food Safe to Eat?

Yes. Food rescue focuses on products that are still safe and suitable for people to eat but can no longer be sold or used by the original business.

Participating organizations follow food-safety procedures for accepting, transporting, inspecting, sorting, storing, and distributing donated products. Refrigerated and frozen food must remain under appropriate temperature controls, and food that does not meet applicable safety or quality requirements is not distributed to neighbors.

Date labels can also cause confusion. Some labels relate primarily to a product’s quality rather than an automatic food-safety deadline. Food Bank of the Rockies evaluates donated products according to its food-safety policies and applicable guidance rather than assuming that every product with an approaching date label must be discarded.

The Fresher, the Better

Access to fresh food is one of the major benefits of being a Hunger Relief Partner, said Jennifer Stone, Product Operations Manager for The Action Center. In addition to food assistance, the Lakewood nonprofit offers rental and utility assistance, access to a clothing bank, and family coaching.

Among The Action Center’s most desired donated food items are fresh produce, milk, other dairy products, and eggs, Stone shared. The organization also appreciates being able to order nutritious grab-and-go foods from Food Bank of the Rockies for community members who may not have reliable access to refrigeration or cooking appliances.

“I think it’s exciting for our community to be able to broaden their palates and try different foods they are not normally able to purchase,” Stone said. “For instance, we receive a lot of expensive items from Whole Foods grocery rescue, and these are simply too expensive for our community members to purchase regularly.”

“It’s great to see faces light up in our self-select grocery when community members find food items they have been looking for or see new foods they’ve never tried,” she added.

Food Bank of the Rockies accepts a wide range of high-quality food from its donation partners, including:

• Meat and other proteins
• Fresh produce
• Bakery and deli items
• Milk and other dairy products
• Frozen food
• Shelf-stable groceries

The organization may also receive useful non-food items, including paper products and personal-care or sanitation supplies.

The types and quantities of available products change from day to day because donations depend on what participating businesses have available.

From Grocery Shelf to Dinner Plate

Many of Food Bank of the Rockies’ larger Donation Partners have established relationships with Feeding America and work with its affiliated food banks to carry out their food-rescue strategies.

Kroger, the parent company of King Soopers and City Market, is one example.

According to Jessica Trowbridge, Corporate Affairs Manager for King Soopers, Food Bank of the Rockies’ Food Rescue Program aligns closely with Kroger’s Zero Hunger | Zero Waste mission to help end hunger in local communities and promote sustainability.

“This program is incredible — it touches our community in so many ways, and it takes the work of so many people,” Trowbridge said. “Food rescue helps King Soopers make sure that any surplus food we have doesn’t end up in a landfill but instead ends up on plates and helps provide people in our community with nutritious food to eat.”

Retail partnerships like this make it possible to collect food from individual store locations and move it into the charitable food system quickly.

Food Rescue in Action: The Action Center

Food Bank of the Rockies’ Food Rescue Program has become an important part of The Action Center’s overall hunger-relief work, shared Carolyn Alexander, Senior Director of Operations at the nonprofit.

“Food Bank of the Rockies provides the backbone and coordination of all of our grocery rescue efforts,” she said. “They assign the retail stores and pickup days to the various agency partners and provide support if there are issues or modifications needed.”

The Action Center sends drivers to local stores five days a week to pick up food. Food Bank of the Rockies also provides scheduled deliveries to the organization.

Together, these channels provide The Action Center with approximately 30,000 pounds of rescued groceries each month.

The Action Center also receives food through other Food Bank of the Rockies programs, including The Emergency Food Assistance Program and Everyday Eats, which provides monthly grocery packages to qualifying older adults.

This combination of rescued, purchased, donated, and government-provided food helps community organizations offer a broader and more reliable variety of groceries.

Why Refrigerated and Frozen Storage Matters

Food rescue often includes perishable products such as fresh produce, meat, dairy products, and frozen food. Safely accepting and redistributing these products requires sufficient refrigerator and freezer space, dependable transportation, efficient loading areas, and trained staff members and volunteers.

Food Bank of the Rockies’ expanded distribution facility has three times the cold-storage capacity of its previous building. This additional refrigerated and frozen space allows the organization to accept larger quantities of rescued and donated food, including highly requested products such as fresh produce and protein.

Greater cold-storage capacity also reduces the likelihood that Food Bank of the Rockies will need to turn away perishable donations simply because there is not enough space to store them safely.

How Food Rescue Benefits the Environment

Food rescue helps people access nourishing food, but it also offers environmental benefits.

Producing food requires land, water, energy, labor, fertilizer, fuel, packaging, and transportation. When edible food goes uneaten, many of those resources are wasted as well.

Food that decomposes in a landfill can also produce methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Redirecting edible products to people helps keep food out of landfills and puts the resources used to grow, manufacture, package, and transport it to their intended purpose.

In fiscal year 2024, Food Bank of the Rockies estimated that its Food Rescue Program prevented more than 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere.

[Editor’s note: Before publication, confirm whether this figure should be described as carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide equivalent, and add the name of the methodology or calculator used to produce the estimate.]

Food rescue can also help participating businesses work toward their own sustainability and waste-reduction goals.

A Collaborative Web of Community Partners

Ultimately, Food Bank of the Rockies’ Food Rescue Program has been successful because of the strong relationships developed among local nonprofits, retailers, farms, manufacturers, distributors, volunteers, and supporters.

“Food rescue has been part of the Food Bank’s DNA from the beginning, but we couldn’t do the work we do without having great partners across the food ecosystem helping to provide the surplus food we use to feed folks in need,” said Mark Weslar, Food Sourcing Director at Food Bank of the Rockies.

“It’s really a collaborative web of people working to make it happen.”

That collaboration helps capture food within the community and keep it within the community, putting nourishing products to use while helping neighbors experiencing food insecurity.