Reducing Food Waste in U.S. Food Banks: The Role of Distribution Strategies

Up to 40% of the food supply in the U.S. goes uneaten while one in nine individuals struggle to put enough food on their table. Food banks serve an important role in addressing food insecurity by matching the supply of excess food with the demand from the food-insecure population. They collect in-kind donations (“non-discretionary” food), often perishable and highly variable in their quality, quantity, content, and timing, and then distribute these donations to serve the needs of the food-insecure population. Reducing waste in the food distribution process is critical to improving the effectiveness of food banks. Our study provides a holistic investigation of food waste at food banks, utilizing data from 200 food banks within the Feeding America network over a 5-year horizon. We utilize a two-stage least squares approach for our analysis, accounting for the potential endogeneity bias in this setting. We find that while food waste increases with the proportion of non-discretionary food supply, with a larger impact at higher levels of non-discretionary food, a larger fleet size and gaining faster access to clients through an on-site emergency pantry can mitigate this rate of increase. Furthermore, the use of direct distribution strategies to reach clients faster, such as just-in-time delivery using mobile pantries, can significantly reduce food waste. On the other hand, the impact of agency-empowered delivery, where food banks coordinate the distribution of the donated food directly from donors to the partner agencies, depends on the size of the network. We validate our findings using structured interviews with 19 food bank employees from five different food banks in various positions. Overall, our results provide a better understanding of the impact of direct distribution strategies, an increased trucking capacity, or an increased pantry size on the level of food waste in the distribution process, which can help food banks make more informed decisions on where to invest their limited resources to reduce food waste.