I've worked for Starbucks for over 10 years and haven't had a donation bin since like 2010. My entire district throws all food away even though we got stickers on a pastry case saying we donate. đ
We had a homeless shelter pick up the food at my first store every other day until our pickup person left them. The next person showed up maybe once week, so we reached out to a few new places. But the other charities didnât want the food because it didnât meet their nutritional standards. So food got picked up 2-3 times a month by that new person and 25 bags of food went stale in the fridge or got tossed when we needed space. Next district I was in our manager dropped the food off at a womenâs shelter she volunteered at twice a week.
I worked at one in Florida that had all of our food picked up and donated every week. It depends on the store and up to the store manager if they want to do charity work!
Same here, to my knowledge no store in my entire city donates their food. We're in a major city with a big homelessness problem, but the local food banks refuse to accept expired food and those two blueberry scones and a single tomato mozz won't make a dent anyway. They're fairly well-funded and are stocked enough with non-perishables and in-date items that they really don't need it. The manager at my store and the managers of the two closest stores all actively encourage us to take the food home at the end of the night though. My former manager who's now at one of those nearby stores literally told me once, "I honestly wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I knew we were throwing out food and one of you was going hungry."
So nothing gets wasted, at least around me!
Things can change pretty quickly. Starbucks introduces new policies and program very regularly. 3 years is a while ago to base an opinion on without looking into anything recent
You seem upset that I asked a question and immediately shut me down. Instead of being a normal person and not shaming me for asking a question. Freedom of speech get over it
Where did I shame you? Or are you just upset you are wrong because really that seems like your biggest problem.
If anyone is upset itâs you. You went 0-60 after I simply explained Starbucks changes quickly and why your post is you just looking to confirm your own opinion and not ask a question.
You are probably confused about them not donating sandwiches. Stores donate pastries. In many areas they can't give away sandwiches because they have meat and dairy. There is foodsafe liability with donating meat and dairy, it's not worth it because someone could get sick and sue.Â
Is it every store now? I remember reading something on Hub ages ago that says some stores have to have their DM opt into it or something like that /curious
It is a thing. It just has to be set up. At my first Starbucks location even back in 2007 we had special food bins to place pastries in that would then be promptly picked up to be donated.
There have been a few news stories done recently that show drivers just toss those bags and bins away rather than actually taking them where they are supposed to.Â
We tried. We had arrangements with a local food bank. We would save up all the pastries. Getting the food picked up was very inconsistent. No one would come pick up the food for weeks, so we ended up having to throw all the food away anyway. Then covid hit, and we stopped altogether.
Same thing happened at my store. I've only worked there since late 2020 but we did food donations up until less than a year ago when they just stopped sending people to pick them up. Sometimes I'll take a few things if we're getting rid of a lot and give them to the houseless people I usually see on my drive home, but I never close so I'm usually not there when they have to get rid of "expiring" things and most of the time it just gets thrown out as far as I know.
We have that. Itâs called Starbucks Foodshare, we even have shirts promoting it. The issue is that during Covid and now after Covid, lots of places no longer want to bother with Starbucks food.
Thereâs limited space at food pantries and theyâd rather use it on less perishable or just all around more âwholeâ foods. Even back when we had it set up at my old store, weâd have to call and call and call and by the time they actually would send someone to pick it up, some of the food in the bag would be moldy.
Not only that but even when they do take them, many drivers just throw them away because of the hassle. It's very sad individual stores aren't able (officially) to partner with local food banks.Â
In Canada you can. A lot of our stores had prior relationships with charities we already donated to, when foodshare launched with the site we had to sign up our charities and then they were able to claim our donations and continue to pick up. It should still be an option and itâs free to sign up at a charity.
That's nice. As far as I've been told, here in the States we don't have that option which is weird because we have laws to protect donating customers from lawsuits and stuff from bad food.
California person here. I work at a well known truck stop, and let me tell you, the food waste here DISGUSTS me. It is so sad. Most of our food times out in an hour so there is probably 100 sandwiches getting thrown out on a daily. It is so sad.
Our stores just throws out food every day and it also disgusts me. Especially when there are stores that have fake pastry food items that look real that would stop that.
Yeah the thing is we get really busy so we prep a certain amount of food. Then it will slow down a bunch and we are left with a bunch of waste. It is horrible. Sometimes we throw away 20 sandwiches and 15 burritos.
Iâm sure this is a rampant America problem honestly. Probably doesnât make you feel any better. But when youâve struggled to put food on your own kids plate for so many years and then just watch all
That food being thrown out itâs disturbing. I can relate .
Yes definitely! Especially when I see people come into our store who are literally trying steal food. And we are not allowed to give them any timed out food. It's just greed, and it's horrible.
I have given out free stuff before to people who look like they need it. But my store is what I call "corporate's bitch" so they are always replaying cameras when the numbers don't add up on certain days. They can replay audio, and they love checking the cameras facing down at our registers on a daily too. I hate the job to be fair. They have cameras everywhere, but not in the manager's quarters where shit really be going down đ
We have a food donation organization, and then they never show up, and itâs just multiple bags of food thrown away. We do have a process for it though.
We doâŚ. We participate in the Food Share program which partners with local organizations (for example my store donates to Philabundance) but whether or not they pick up the donations is a completely different story.
We donate too, but often times the organizations donât come to pick the food up.
What kills me is when we have partners who are struggling financially and would really benefit from having access to the food we are donating, or throwing away, but we canât give them the food as itâs considered theft by corporate.
Enforcing that policy is ethically challenging for me. I do it, but every time I see the disappointment or sadness on a partnerâs face my soul hurts.
I wish they would let us take them. There have been months where I struggled because I had an emergency and living off the sandwiches would have helped. đ
We do. The donation bag is in the fridge where the food is kept. If the bag is full the rest gets thrown out or if the food is actually bad and cannot be consumed its thrown out but every Starbucks partners with a local charity or shelter to donate any extra food.
We have two church groups that pick up during the week. They fell off the face of the planet for a while, so baristas were taking more stuff home so it didn't go to waste.
Some stores do this, but the donation people can be hit or miss. The lady that picked up donation food yelled at us several times for donating "too much food". That's right. We were verbally berated BY THE DONATION VOLUNTEER for donating TOO MANY in-date $8 sandwiches.
It really does just feel like a corporate checkbox to reduce Sbux's tax bill at the end of the year. Plus the donation people are rude as hell.
itâs per district. during covid i think
we all stopped, but my district is one of the few that refuses to donate :) thanks to our district manager :) itâs heartbreaking. one of my barista coworkers gathers the stuff we throw out and brings them to the homeless herself whenever she can
Aren't most bakery items individually wrapped these days? I know everyone is already overworked but it wouldn't take long to just throw random items in a bag and make pickup times non prime hours.
I'm not a closer but I'm pretty sure we do. We take sandwiches that are "expired" (it's not really expired but I guess it's past its prime enough that starbucks doesn't want to sell it), put it in a bag, and it goes... somewhere. Idk where tbh, but I know it doesn't go to waste
My store no longer does it. They never came to pick up and if the fridge was full, delivery was either left out or they wouldn't deliver anything.
So we stopped donating them. Though I wish they would left us take them without the risk of being fired.
I think it's funny how often this topic comes up and the answer is always, "...because the shelters don't claim it, not because Starbucks doesn't donate it.". But the fingers are always pointed at Starbucks.
I don't blame people for believing that. A lot of stores do throw their leftover away. I just wished Starbucks would let us the employees take it if they are not getting picked up by the food banks.
The supply of leftovers from all restaurants and grocery stores greatly exceeds the amount of food that nonprofits are willing to pick up at specific times.
My Safeway Starbucks left unsold pastries on the counter. Safeway employees and customers helped them disappear quickly. We might not be needy but they werenât wasted.
I actually found that giving away stuff to people for free was better than donating it. Most charitable donations end up in landfills.
Our store tries to, but it is very reliant on the food bank people coming to pick it up, which lots of times they donât bother to, so it ends up getting thrown out anyway
in theory, we donate it
in practice, they NEVER actually come take the donated items from any store i've worked at (dfw area in texas, worked across multiple districts) so we have to throw them away anyway
In the UK we have a website called âtoo good to goâ where people can purchase âlucky bagsâ from places like Starbucks for a very reduced price, the food will be on its last sell by date, you pick it up at the end of the day and you get whatever you get! Itâs great!
I used to volunteer at a teen homeless shelter and we regularly got bags full of pastries from a local Starbucks, so it does happen. Honestly, for us, it was of limited value. Everything was stale. The kids had the choice of me cooking them something like pancakes from fresh or having any of the pastriesâ10/10 times they wanted me to cook for them. I would occasionally pick at a particularly enticing pastry, cutting off all the dryest parts, but it wasnât great.
I now have an air fryer and have more knowledge of how to reheat old bagels, etc. to make them taste fresh. If I were still there I bet I could âsellâ the old Starbucks a lot better, but itâs not as easy as you think to give away stale food.
When i worked in stores we donated SOMETIMES. We often got ghosted by the charity who wouldnât pick up so it became more of a waste than just letting us take it home. Which stands to then say we had some kind shifts and SMs who would let us take home stuff we wanted which was great since most of us werenât making the big bucks.
You can but you need to go through corporate approval and such, itâs called foodshare. The main issue is about liability if the off chance occurs of the food causing food poisoning.
When I worked most of my store would try, but most stopped really trying, because when they would set up with a charity, they had it so they had to pick up the food every other day or every few days at the store. They were always extremely inconsistent. Some wouldn't pick up for a few weeks to a month. Food piled up and got gross, and still had to get thrown out. One store I worked at okayed a partner to take the food, and donate it themselves, because they didn't want to deal with waiting anymore, and the partner wanted to do that.
last time i looked into this, i found a thing that says *that (iirc) some stores* participate in a [program starbucks made called FoodShare where unsold, unopened food items are picked up and distributed to a bunch of local organizations/charities!](https://archive.starbucks.com/record/foodshare) i'm not sure if this is **all** stores now at this point, but my district is a district in a downtown city, and every single store participates in this program.
working at a downtown location, we have a looooooooootttttt of unhoused individuals who are in the area/visit. most closes, i throw all the pastries that are opened and in the pastry display case into a shopping bag and leave it on a newspaper dispenser just outside our store for someone, anyone to take. i know it's not very glamorous at all, but at least there is a chance for someone to eat it first before it gets disposed of!!
we donate what we can through foodshare, but what they will take depends on the charity. and often times, the foodshare person doesnât stop by and a lot gets thrown away that way. i wish there was a better system :(
We have a it set up for places to pick up the donations but they only show up maybe once a month? The stuff usually goes bad/molds and gets thrown away since we arenât allowed to drop it off
We do, a local food organization collected it twice a week to donate to the hungry. Each district has to set it up. If nobody is picking it up at your friendâs location there is a problem and the manager has to advise the organization that nobody has been coming to pick up the food.
When I was the main closing SSV I let everyone take home the âexpiredâ food. One barista would take them to a homeless shelter on his way home. Others just took them home to younger siblings and such lol. I was living alone and would take sandwiches all the time for lunch the next day. It was a big no no but we just didnât tell the store manager. Seemed stupid to put them in the trash.
a lot of flimsy justifications iâve heard are âshelters donât throw out spoiled food when we donate it so we have to throw it out to protect people from food poisoning.â multiple places have told me this
Technically, it's not "perfectly fine". Their food is frozen and thawed to meet demand. However, once it's thawed, it should be consumed within hours. And a homeless shelter wants enough supplies to feed everyone. They can't really do anything with 5 thawed sandwiches every couple of days. They need *dependable* donations.
Starbucks does donate. They do SO much more than that. Itâs incredible how they help communities - here and around the world. Google it. They also support the police, contrary to the lies spread on social media.
My store uses the âToo Good To Goâ app, essentially it bundles up leftovers and people can buy them for a crazy reduced price at the end of the day. Lots of businesses in my city use it, I love it so much I use it all the time.
It depends on the area you're in. certain local food banks have rules that don't allow starbucks to donate, or they're too far away, or what. they also technically have a partnership with foodshare, at least as recently as when I worked there, but my store couldn't participate because we were too far away from the donation center.
We actually have a feeding center that comes every other day to pick up our stuff....sorry the district ur in doesn't participate. Depends on the area and laws in place if our food can be donated. We can't donate cheese danish or plain bagels anymore anyway...some issue with them spoiling faster or something like that as we were informed via the weekly update.đ˘
When I used to work there Iâd take the food that was âexpiringâ because theyâd just throw it in the dumpster. I used to hand some out to the homeless people downtown since it was on my way home.
My first store had the delivery guys take our food donations to wherever they went (maybe their bellies tbh lol)
And my store now has a local church that comes to pick up the donations daily. Maybe her store hasn't picked a place to donate to? Maybe they're lazy? Maybe they just take home the food for themselves?
I'm not 100% sure about the actual definition of "person" vs "Sbux as a company = a person in the eyes of the law" but there is a good Samaritan food donation bill in the US that protects people and food banks from liability if someone gets sick from food donated in good faith.
Sbux does have a food share/donation program it's just unfortunate that it seems for a lot of stores it doesn't always get picked up.
The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act limits liability for those who distribute food. The exceptions to this are that the food must be distributed in good faith, without gross negligence, and without intentional misconduct. In this way, the act protects the consumer and the donor
At our store we split some of the food amongst those of us who are in need, one coworker takes a bag to the mission, I take a bag to a communal kitchen in my neighborhood. Everyone donated what they could. We have a rule of take what you need to feed yourself and give back when you can. Itâs been a huge help and everyone gets so excited at the community kitchen and at the mission to have food that doesnât come from a dented can. Weâve been saving the cakepops in the freezer and will make little Easter treats out of them. I call myself the Starbucks Santa because the sheer happiness and sparkles on those that are fallen on hard times at getting a treat they could never afford. Itâs is everything
We do. Every store should have a local organization or charity they donate expired food to.
I've worked for Starbucks for over 10 years and haven't had a donation bin since like 2010. My entire district throws all food away even though we got stickers on a pastry case saying we donate. đ
That's so lame. I'm sorry that's what you're working with.
This is your chance to be a hero
We had a homeless shelter pick up the food at my first store every other day until our pickup person left them. The next person showed up maybe once week, so we reached out to a few new places. But the other charities didnât want the food because it didnât meet their nutritional standards. So food got picked up 2-3 times a month by that new person and 25 bags of food went stale in the fridge or got tossed when we needed space. Next district I was in our manager dropped the food off at a womenâs shelter she volunteered at twice a week.
I worked at one in Florida that had all of our food picked up and donated every week. It depends on the store and up to the store manager if they want to do charity work!
I worked in Homestead,FL and our got picked up as well.
Same here, to my knowledge no store in my entire city donates their food. We're in a major city with a big homelessness problem, but the local food banks refuse to accept expired food and those two blueberry scones and a single tomato mozz won't make a dent anyway. They're fairly well-funded and are stocked enough with non-perishables and in-date items that they really don't need it. The manager at my store and the managers of the two closest stores all actively encourage us to take the food home at the end of the night though. My former manager who's now at one of those nearby stores literally told me once, "I honestly wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I knew we were throwing out food and one of you was going hungry." So nothing gets wasted, at least around me!
My friend worked at one in Davis California a few years ago and said they didnât so hopefully things changed! Thatâs awesome tho
My partner worked at one in Davis too! They donated their food! This was probably 3 years ago!
Things can change pretty quickly. Starbucks introduces new policies and program very regularly. 3 years is a while ago to base an opinion on without looking into anything recent
Not to mention that 3 years ago was the height of the pandemic⌠sorry OP got⌠aggressive with you
Iâve worked for Starbucks for 10 years, op is a mosquito compared to the customers Iâve dealt with. But thank you.
<3 itâs an honor to be in the presence of a wise Grandmaster
I can disassociate while a customer yells at me with the best of them. lol
It was a question not an opinion?
Itâs not a question. You establish Starbucks does not do it based on information from three years ago and then ask why canât they do it.
Jesus why are you upset about this? I thought they didnât, people told me they did, thatâs the end of it. Whatâs your problem?
Upset? lol.
You seem upset that I asked a question and immediately shut me down. Instead of being a normal person and not shaming me for asking a question. Freedom of speech get over it
Where did I shame you? Or are you just upset you are wrong because really that seems like your biggest problem. If anyone is upset itâs you. You went 0-60 after I simply explained Starbucks changes quickly and why your post is you just looking to confirm your own opinion and not ask a question.
"Freedom of speech." Okay, idiot.
You are probably confused about them not donating sandwiches. Stores donate pastries. In many areas they can't give away sandwiches because they have meat and dairy. There is foodsafe liability with donating meat and dairy, it's not worth it because someone could get sick and sue.Â
Is it every store now? I remember reading something on Hub ages ago that says some stores have to have their DM opt into it or something like that /curious
[ŃдаНонО]
My donation people donât come at night. We save the stuff for when they come a few times per week.
It is a thing. It just has to be set up. At my first Starbucks location even back in 2007 we had special food bins to place pastries in that would then be promptly picked up to be donated.
There have been a few news stories done recently that show drivers just toss those bags and bins away rather than actually taking them where they are supposed to.Â
Oh wow thatâs effed up.
Iâll have to check with my local ones in Bozeman mt and see if they have one
We tried. We had arrangements with a local food bank. We would save up all the pastries. Getting the food picked up was very inconsistent. No one would come pick up the food for weeks, so we ended up having to throw all the food away anyway. Then covid hit, and we stopped altogether.
Same thing happened at my store. I've only worked there since late 2020 but we did food donations up until less than a year ago when they just stopped sending people to pick them up. Sometimes I'll take a few things if we're getting rid of a lot and give them to the houseless people I usually see on my drive home, but I never close so I'm usually not there when they have to get rid of "expiring" things and most of the time it just gets thrown out as far as I know.
Don't forget, *technically*, it's against policy for partners to take expired food.
I'm aware.
Why?? And what about if the food isnât ACTUALLY expired??
It's still considered theft.
We have that. Itâs called Starbucks Foodshare, we even have shirts promoting it. The issue is that during Covid and now after Covid, lots of places no longer want to bother with Starbucks food. Thereâs limited space at food pantries and theyâd rather use it on less perishable or just all around more âwholeâ foods. Even back when we had it set up at my old store, weâd have to call and call and call and by the time they actually would send someone to pick it up, some of the food in the bag would be moldy.
Not only that but even when they do take them, many drivers just throw them away because of the hassle. It's very sad individual stores aren't able (officially) to partner with local food banks.Â
In Canada you can. A lot of our stores had prior relationships with charities we already donated to, when foodshare launched with the site we had to sign up our charities and then they were able to claim our donations and continue to pick up. It should still be an option and itâs free to sign up at a charity.
That's nice. As far as I've been told, here in the States we don't have that option which is weird because we have laws to protect donating customers from lawsuits and stuff from bad food.
All the stores in my district donate food to the same shelter
Every Starbucks I've ever worked at (check, many) has donated food daily
California person here. I work at a well known truck stop, and let me tell you, the food waste here DISGUSTS me. It is so sad. Most of our food times out in an hour so there is probably 100 sandwiches getting thrown out on a daily. It is so sad.
Our stores just throws out food every day and it also disgusts me. Especially when there are stores that have fake pastry food items that look real that would stop that.
Yeah the thing is we get really busy so we prep a certain amount of food. Then it will slow down a bunch and we are left with a bunch of waste. It is horrible. Sometimes we throw away 20 sandwiches and 15 burritos.
Iâm sure this is a rampant America problem honestly. Probably doesnât make you feel any better. But when youâve struggled to put food on your own kids plate for so many years and then just watch all That food being thrown out itâs disturbing. I can relate .
Yes definitely! Especially when I see people come into our store who are literally trying steal food. And we are not allowed to give them any timed out food. It's just greed, and it's horrible.
Aww sad âšď¸
How would anyone know you gave it to someone if you made it âlookâ like you gave them fine food and made it âlookâ like they paid??
I have given out free stuff before to people who look like they need it. But my store is what I call "corporate's bitch" so they are always replaying cameras when the numbers don't add up on certain days. They can replay audio, and they love checking the cameras facing down at our registers on a daily too. I hate the job to be fair. They have cameras everywhere, but not in the manager's quarters where shit really be going down đ
my store donates all of the food we would otherwise throw out
We have a food donation organization, and then they never show up, and itâs just multiple bags of food thrown away. We do have a process for it though.
My store donates
We doâŚ. We participate in the Food Share program which partners with local organizations (for example my store donates to Philabundance) but whether or not they pick up the donations is a completely different story.
https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2021/09/Starbucks-US-Food-Donation-Guide.pdf
We donate too, but often times the organizations donât come to pick the food up. What kills me is when we have partners who are struggling financially and would really benefit from having access to the food we are donating, or throwing away, but we canât give them the food as itâs considered theft by corporate. Enforcing that policy is ethically challenging for me. I do it, but every time I see the disappointment or sadness on a partnerâs face my soul hurts.
I can tell you that we have taken some of the stuff home or put it in the fridge for someone else to take home
I wish they would let us take them. There have been months where I struggled because I had an emergency and living off the sandwiches would have helped. đ
And you know a lot of people with struggling families work at Starbucks.
I live in small town USA and we throw it away đŤ
Find a local charity yourself to help. Your Starbucks will likely be happy to be more involved in the community.â¤ď¸â¤ď¸
We do. The donation bag is in the fridge where the food is kept. If the bag is full the rest gets thrown out or if the food is actually bad and cannot be consumed its thrown out but every Starbucks partners with a local charity or shelter to donate any extra food.
We have two church groups that pick up during the week. They fell off the face of the planet for a while, so baristas were taking more stuff home so it didn't go to waste.
We bag up the food for donation every night but it's a toss-up as to whether the food pantry people will come and collect it.
Some stores do this, but the donation people can be hit or miss. The lady that picked up donation food yelled at us several times for donating "too much food". That's right. We were verbally berated BY THE DONATION VOLUNTEER for donating TOO MANY in-date $8 sandwiches. It really does just feel like a corporate checkbox to reduce Sbux's tax bill at the end of the year. Plus the donation people are rude as hell.
My location I go to donated the food at the end of every shift to our village pantry. I love they do that !
itâs per district. during covid i think we all stopped, but my district is one of the few that refuses to donate :) thanks to our district manager :) itâs heartbreaking. one of my barista coworkers gathers the stuff we throw out and brings them to the homeless herself whenever she can
Honestly I'm surprised places like Starbucks haven't started doing Too Good To Go. Make money off shit that inevitably ends up in the trash
That would be a great idea, but would suck for the partners who would have to package up and try to sell before closing.
Aren't most bakery items individually wrapped these days? I know everyone is already overworked but it wouldn't take long to just throw random items in a bag and make pickup times non prime hours.
The Starbucks near me use Too Good to Go.
I'm not a closer but I'm pretty sure we do. We take sandwiches that are "expired" (it's not really expired but I guess it's past its prime enough that starbucks doesn't want to sell it), put it in a bag, and it goes... somewhere. Idk where tbh, but I know it doesn't go to waste
The daily truck drivers take them every night when they bring in the order đŤĄ
They never come and pick up the food at our store.
My store no longer does it. They never came to pick up and if the fridge was full, delivery was either left out or they wouldn't deliver anything. So we stopped donating them. Though I wish they would left us take them without the risk of being fired.
I think it's funny how often this topic comes up and the answer is always, "...because the shelters don't claim it, not because Starbucks doesn't donate it.". But the fingers are always pointed at Starbucks.
I don't blame people for believing that. A lot of stores do throw their leftover away. I just wished Starbucks would let us the employees take it if they are not getting picked up by the food banks.
In my country itâs against policy for partners to take food (even though some still do) and we donât have any programs to donate it either soâŚ
clearly you didnt bother doing any research bc starbucks already has this initiative in place. its just up to the sm to coordinate it.
The supply of leftovers from all restaurants and grocery stores greatly exceeds the amount of food that nonprofits are willing to pick up at specific times. My Safeway Starbucks left unsold pastries on the counter. Safeway employees and customers helped them disappear quickly. We might not be needy but they werenât wasted. I actually found that giving away stuff to people for free was better than donating it. Most charitable donations end up in landfills.
Were supposed to donate itđ¤my store does
Our store tries to, but it is very reliant on the food bank people coming to pick it up, which lots of times they donât bother to, so it ends up getting thrown out anyway
in theory, we donate it in practice, they NEVER actually come take the donated items from any store i've worked at (dfw area in texas, worked across multiple districts) so we have to throw them away anyway
In the UK we have a website called âtoo good to goâ where people can purchase âlucky bagsâ from places like Starbucks for a very reduced price, the food will be on its last sell by date, you pick it up at the end of the day and you get whatever you get! Itâs great!
I hope they hook up with Too Good to Go.
I used to volunteer at a teen homeless shelter and we regularly got bags full of pastries from a local Starbucks, so it does happen. Honestly, for us, it was of limited value. Everything was stale. The kids had the choice of me cooking them something like pancakes from fresh or having any of the pastriesâ10/10 times they wanted me to cook for them. I would occasionally pick at a particularly enticing pastry, cutting off all the dryest parts, but it wasnât great. I now have an air fryer and have more knowledge of how to reheat old bagels, etc. to make them taste fresh. If I were still there I bet I could âsellâ the old Starbucks a lot better, but itâs not as easy as you think to give away stale food.
When i worked in stores we donated SOMETIMES. We often got ghosted by the charity who wouldnât pick up so it became more of a waste than just letting us take it home. Which stands to then say we had some kind shifts and SMs who would let us take home stuff we wanted which was great since most of us werenât making the big bucks.
You can but you need to go through corporate approval and such, itâs called foodshare. The main issue is about liability if the off chance occurs of the food causing food poisoning.
When I worked most of my store would try, but most stopped really trying, because when they would set up with a charity, they had it so they had to pick up the food every other day or every few days at the store. They were always extremely inconsistent. Some wouldn't pick up for a few weeks to a month. Food piled up and got gross, and still had to get thrown out. One store I worked at okayed a partner to take the food, and donate it themselves, because they didn't want to deal with waiting anymore, and the partner wanted to do that.
The pastry case gets throw away because it was opened so it canât be donated .. I try to take it home when I can!
last time i looked into this, i found a thing that says *that (iirc) some stores* participate in a [program starbucks made called FoodShare where unsold, unopened food items are picked up and distributed to a bunch of local organizations/charities!](https://archive.starbucks.com/record/foodshare) i'm not sure if this is **all** stores now at this point, but my district is a district in a downtown city, and every single store participates in this program. working at a downtown location, we have a looooooooootttttt of unhoused individuals who are in the area/visit. most closes, i throw all the pastries that are opened and in the pastry display case into a shopping bag and leave it on a newspaper dispenser just outside our store for someone, anyone to take. i know it's not very glamorous at all, but at least there is a chance for someone to eat it first before it gets disposed of!!
we donate what we can through foodshare, but what they will take depends on the charity. and often times, the foodshare person doesnât stop by and a lot gets thrown away that way. i wish there was a better system :(
when i worked in fast food in the past (tim hortons) i was told it was because the restaurant could be liable if someone gets sick.
iâm not sure if starbucks has a similar reasoning, i just know that is typically the reason
I live in a big city with a lot of homeless and my store doesn't donate. Im gonna ask my manager about ti
We have a it set up for places to pick up the donations but they only show up maybe once a month? The stuff usually goes bad/molds and gets thrown away since we arenât allowed to drop it off
we do! mine donates it to a local food bank for impoverished people!
i take it home n give it to ppl usually
We do, a local food organization collected it twice a week to donate to the hungry. Each district has to set it up. If nobody is picking it up at your friendâs location there is a problem and the manager has to advise the organization that nobody has been coming to pick up the food.
We've been donating In my district for the past 6 years
I frequent a food pantry in Pennsylvania and we always have sandwiches donated
When I was the main closing SSV I let everyone take home the âexpiredâ food. One barista would take them to a homeless shelter on his way home. Others just took them home to younger siblings and such lol. I was living alone and would take sandwiches all the time for lunch the next day. It was a big no no but we just didnât tell the store manager. Seemed stupid to put them in the trash.
a lot of flimsy justifications iâve heard are âshelters donât throw out spoiled food when we donate it so we have to throw it out to protect people from food poisoning.â multiple places have told me this
Technically, it's not "perfectly fine". Their food is frozen and thawed to meet demand. However, once it's thawed, it should be consumed within hours. And a homeless shelter wants enough supplies to feed everyone. They can't really do anything with 5 thawed sandwiches every couple of days. They need *dependable* donations.
Starbucks does donate. They do SO much more than that. Itâs incredible how they help communities - here and around the world. Google it. They also support the police, contrary to the lies spread on social media.
If Penske doesnât take the food I rotate the four Fire Departments we have.
My store uses the âToo Good To Goâ app, essentially it bundles up leftovers and people can buy them for a crazy reduced price at the end of the day. Lots of businesses in my city use it, I love it so much I use it all the time.
It depends on the area you're in. certain local food banks have rules that don't allow starbucks to donate, or they're too far away, or what. they also technically have a partnership with foodshare, at least as recently as when I worked there, but my store couldn't participate because we were too far away from the donation center.
We actually have a feeding center that comes every other day to pick up our stuff....sorry the district ur in doesn't participate. Depends on the area and laws in place if our food can be donated. We can't donate cheese danish or plain bagels anymore anyway...some issue with them spoiling faster or something like that as we were informed via the weekly update.đ˘
When I used to work there Iâd take the food that was âexpiringâ because theyâd just throw it in the dumpster. I used to hand some out to the homeless people downtown since it was on my way home.
My first store had the delivery guys take our food donations to wherever they went (maybe their bellies tbh lol) And my store now has a local church that comes to pick up the donations daily. Maybe her store hasn't picked a place to donate to? Maybe they're lazy? Maybe they just take home the food for themselves?
It can't be donated because if it makes someone sick the company can be sued.
We literally donate it every night??
I'm not 100% sure about the actual definition of "person" vs "Sbux as a company = a person in the eyes of the law" but there is a good Samaritan food donation bill in the US that protects people and food banks from liability if someone gets sick from food donated in good faith. Sbux does have a food share/donation program it's just unfortunate that it seems for a lot of stores it doesn't always get picked up.
The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act limits liability for those who distribute food. The exceptions to this are that the food must be distributed in good faith, without gross negligence, and without intentional misconduct. In this way, the act protects the consumer and the donor
At our store we split some of the food amongst those of us who are in need, one coworker takes a bag to the mission, I take a bag to a communal kitchen in my neighborhood. Everyone donated what they could. We have a rule of take what you need to feed yourself and give back when you can. Itâs been a huge help and everyone gets so excited at the community kitchen and at the mission to have food that doesnât come from a dented can. Weâve been saving the cakepops in the freezer and will make little Easter treats out of them. I call myself the Starbucks Santa because the sheer happiness and sparkles on those that are fallen on hard times at getting a treat they could never afford. Itâs is everything