Food Waste Management: A Moral Dilemma of Food Service Managers



            Have you ever visited a supermarket and asked yourself, “Why are there so many options? Where does all the unsold food end up?”  These questions have recently become part of a world-wide dialogue regarding food waste.  Food waste, or the disposal of food appropriate for human consumption, has reached staggering heights as 850 million metric tons of food is wasted annually in the United States.  While food waste can occur anywhere along the food supply chain, retail and wholesale stores and their managers are key to addressing this issue.

            The business goals of stores are to provide a wide variety of products and product availability, while minimizing the financial burden and complying with legal regulations.  Large inventories result in the inevitable repurposing of food for charities, animal feed, and, most commonly, disposal or recycling.  In the face of such extreme food waste, managers are now experiencing a moral burden when required to dispose of unsalable, but still consumable, products while so many people, including employees, are experiencing food insecurity.  As a result, stores are now reexamining their goals to help ease the moral burden of the store managers and find new avenues for food upcycling.

            Although store managers must fight battles against regulatory bodies dictating expiration or sell-by dates, as well as societal expectations for product quality and availability, the solution is clear.  Recommendations to reduce food waste include changing regulatory requirements to allow for more freedom to donate to charities; adopting more effective training programs to eliminate accidental food waste; and educating consumers to appropriately read expiration or sell-by dates, make more mindful purchasing decisions, and be open to purchasing “abnormal foods”.  As stores work to mitigate consumerism, store managers will have more autonomy to repurpose foods, help feed the population, and ease their moral burden.

Gruber, V. v., Holweg, C. c., & Teller, C. c. (2016). What a waste! Exploring the human reality of food waste from the store manager's perspective. Journal Of Public Policy & Marketing, 35(1), 3-25. doi: 10.1509/jppm.14.095

LH

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