Tech is helping grocery stores waste less food. That’s a problem for food banks

First, the good news: Grocery stores are getting better at cutting food waste. AI tools can help better predict demand for each product, for example, and help a store reduce waste by more than a third. Other tech can help stores sell food before it expires.

But there’s a catch—some food banks say that now they’re getting fewer donations.

How retailers are getting better at wasting less

Demand forecasting software is becoming widely used, with deep learning models that can predict how much of an item might sell based on everything from the weather forecast to the timing of food stamps. Afresh, one tool, is now in use in more than 12,000 grocery departments, and says that it has helped prevent more than 200 million pounds of food waste. Stores are less likely to overorder—in some cases, the AI handles ordering directly—and less food is thrown out. Guac, another AI ordering tool, says that its customers have been able to reduce food waste by as much as 38%.

Another startup, Crisp, also forecasts demand to place orders, then uses artificial intelligence to better estimate shelf life, allowing retailers to intervene and change the price on produce, meat, or other perishable food so it sells before it goes bad. One study estimates that dynamic pricing can cut waste by 21%. Some apps also connect consumers with last-minute deals on food that’s about to expire at stores or restaurants. All of this can mean that less food is given away.

Even as stores are becoming more efficient, more Americans are struggling to afford groceries and are more likely to go to food banks. “The food supply is tightening as the demand for [charitable] food is going up,” says Joseph Slater, chief operations officer at Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana. “What that has forced food banks into is to fill that gap, we have to buy food.”

In 2018, the Indiana food bank spent most of its budget on infrastructure such as warehousing expenses, and since most of its food was donated, only 16% of charitable donations went directly to buying food. This year, 50% of its budget will go to buying food.

Efficiency is increasing throughout the supply chain. Slater says meat producers that donated food to Gleaners in the past have slowed down production after having a surplus during the pandemic. They’ve also found new markets. Foods that are less demanded in the U.S., such as chicken drumsticks, are now being sold overseas rather than donated. Farmers are also using software to better predict demand when planting crops.

But some of the changes are most noticeable at supermarkets, which historically have been the largest source of donated food for most food banks. In Washington, West Seattle Food Bank has seen a 10% drop in donations from the largest grocery stores it works with—a reduction of more than 15,000 pounds of food—over the past six years. Over the same period, the use of new efficiency tools has grown.

“I worked in corporate grocery in 2017 and 2018 here in the Seattle area,” says Robbin Peterson, development director for the food bank. “And many stores, especially independents, were just starting to adopt the technology to do on-demand ordering.” In the past, she says, stores would keep around 10% extra stock to make sure they didn’t run out, but that’s not happening now. “I think that’s what we’re seeing—we’re not getting the fluff that they used to invest in to make sure that their shelf looks full,” she says.

Other tools are also likely having an impact, like Too Good to Go, an app that helps stores and restaurants sell excess food at the last minute. “Those products are having an opportunity to be sold before they ever reach us,” Peterson says.

The amount of donations fluctuates. West Seattle Food Bank recently had a surge in donations of lettuce and bagged salads—and anything labeled Taylor Farms—as people weren’t buying the produce at supermarkets because of cyclospora fears. (Some were wary at the food bank, too, Peterson says, although everything goes through multiple rounds of recall checks before it ends up there and is arguably even safer than buying at a retail store.) Some supermarkets also still reject truckloads of less-than-perfect-looking produce, some of which ends up at the food bank.

The evidence is anecdotal so far, and in theory, a grocery store could reduce food waste in ways that don’t impact donations. For example, sensors and AI can track produce in storage to make sure it goes out on the sales floor before it goes bad—preventing waste without necessarily reducing the amount of edible food available to food banks. Still, the broader trend raises questions about whether greater efficiency could mean fewer donations. The Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment, a coalition of businesses committed to reducing food waste, collectively cut its unsold food rate by 30% between 2019 and 2023. Total tons of unsold food also fell, while the percentage that was donated stayed roughly the same, meaning that food banks were ending up with less.

Food banks are feeling the squeeze

There are other reasons that food donations have fallen. The Trump administration has slashed funding for food aid. In 2025, for example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut $500 million that was supposed to be used to buy food for states to distribute to food banks, the equivalent of 94 million pounds of food aid. (The administration also cut funding that states could use to buy food from local farms.)

“We’ve seen a trend over the last two years of our food donations going down by about 24%,” says Micah Crisman, a spokesperson for Manna FoodBank in North Carolina. “That’s been largely because of reductions in federal food support.”

The food bank has faced other local challenges—like the fact that Hurricane Helene in 2024 destroyed grocery store and food distribution infrastructure. Individuals who might have donated food from their own pantries in the past are less likely to now because they’re also struggling with the higher cost of living, Crisman says. The organization has had to increase its purchasing budget by around 156% over two years.

The problems are compounding. “At the time the supply chain was tightening, inflation was going up,” says Slater at Gleaners Food Bank. “Wages were stagnant, and it was putting more people in a position where they just weren’t able to meet kind of the basic household budgets, and that percentage of people continues to go up.” Millions of people, including many children, have already lost food aid after cuts to SNAP, the federal assistance program, and more changes to SNAP will roll out in October.

The challenge is obviously larger than grocery stores adopting new technology: half of Americans now say they have trouble affording groceries, regardless of whether they have a job. Slightly older data shows that most households struggling to feed themselves have at least one adult working full-time. A system that forces people with jobs to rely on donated food is arguably broken.

But in the economy we live in, food banks are critical. Some are finding creative ways to adapt as the landscape changes. In Indiana, Gleaners now aggregates demand from other food banks so that it can negotiate lower prices for the food it buys; it sells the food for a slight markup and uses that revenue to supplement its philanthropic dollars. It’s also started turning its own infrastructure into a business—for example, renting out storage space to food vendors who temporarily need more room.

“That’s helped us locally fill the gap,” says Slater. “Truth be told, most food banks have not cracked that code and figured that out. They’re trying to. But it’s really important that we figure out how we earn money in addition to [raising money] to sustain this thing.”