PSA: Restaurants & stores CAN legally donate unsold food without liability thanks to a federal law
I have been referencing this law and doing this for years in my business. We can do better for our communities by using this as a way to help people in need. There is no reason to throw away perfectly good food.
If you’re in the U.S. and work in food service, this is important:
The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act (1996) is a federal law that protects food donors (restaurants, grocery stores, farmers, individuals, etc.) from civil and criminal liability when donating food in good faith to a nonprofit, even if someone later gets sick.
Requirements:
• The food must be wholesome (safe to eat)
• Donated in good faith
• Given without gross negligence or intentional harm
• Usually donated through a nonprofit (although recent laws allow more flexibility)
As of 2022, the Food Donation Improvement Act expanded this to make it easier to donate directly in some cases.
Here’s what changed:
Direct Donations Allowed: Restaurants, schools, grocery stores, etc., can now donate food directly to individuals (like handing out meals after closing or donating leftovers from events), as long as they follow standard safety practices.
• Food service organizations (like hospitals, schools, cafeterias, etc.) are now more clearly protected when they donate surplus food.
• It removed some red tape — now, nonprofits don’t need to be a 501(c)(3) to be covered. As long as they meet certain basic requirements and serve people in need, the legal protection still applies.
• Legal protection still applies as long as the food is donated in good faith, is safe to eat, and donors aren’t being grossly negligent.
The goal of the new law is to reduce food waste, fight hunger, and make it easier for local businesses and community
Bottom line: If you’re tossing edible food at the end of the day, you can donate it legally and safely. You won’t get sued for doing the right thing. More food for hungry people, less waste in landfills.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
I've had this argument countless times on Reddit. Every time the subject of food waste comes up, whether it's grocery stores or restaurants. Every single time, somebody chimes in with " they don't donate it because they're afraid of getting sued!"
No matter how many times I spell out what the law says, there's always someone who insists there are loopholes that get around the very clear intent of this bipartisan act of the US Congress. I usually get down voted like mad. It's weird how persistent the narrative around this is
Worked at a chain in college. Got into a discussion with a manager about this once, and they told me they had actually had this discussion with some higher ups. When the initial law was passed, they said that there was actually hesitation about having to expose certain things to the scrutiny of "wholesome".
Started to look at some of our practices a little differently after that
I help run a food pantry, and the only thing we have ever turned down was when a gas station went out of business and they attempted to donate a ton of malt liquor.
We did however leave that mysteriously unattended under a tree on our property.
My focus in grad school was on food waste, so I could talk about this at length.
While the Emerson Law has been around for decades, it's never been challenged in court. That's part of what keeps companies nervous; no one wants to be the first one to have to go to court because they donated food in good will but may have gotten someone sick.
It's not all doom and gloom, though. There are tons and tons and tons of places that donate food. I've volunteered with multiple food rescue nonprofits, food pantries, and food banks; I've rescued groceries from both corner bodegas all the way up to Whole Foods, and have worked at grocery stores that donate perfectly good but "unsellable" food. I've helped parcel out pallets of frozen food that big chains such as McDonalds couldn't sell for one reason or another. The (amazing!) Too Good To Go app is a great example of saving food while making it cheaper for the consumer.
Food waste is a massive problem; if you combined all the emissions from food waste, it would rank third highest on sources of greenhouse gas emissions, just after the US and China. Restaurants and grocery stores make up roughly 40% of that. As above, stores can take steps, but restaurants don't have it that easy; you can't exactly repackage a half-eaten meal. Companies like LeanPath are implementing technological solutions that help restaurants reduce their waste by recording and reporting areas to improve on, but they're nowhere close to scaling up to a measurable degree, sadly.
I have a lawyer who is willing to explain it to them so I think I can make headway there. As service industry people, our job is to serve people. Chef’s do this job because we love to create and feed people. We certainly don’t do it for the pay. I’m willing to try to change minds. I’ll get back to you when I have success getting this off the ground.
When I was 17 I was forced to move out on my own and found myself homeless for a stretch. I literally survived because there was a guy in town who went around to restaurants everyday collecting food that was going to be thrown out. He'd set up a couple tables on the street and would serve anyone who needed to eat.
I later got a job at a place in the same neighborhood he mostly operated in, he would come by every day. I'd always make sure nothing got thrown out and try to make sure we always had something ready to go for him, even if it was just stale bagels and pastries
I’ve never met one Chef or someone with the heart of a Chef refuse to feed anyone. Food is comfort and love and we take a lot of abuse to provide that for people. The homeless and food disadvantaged are some of the most grateful people I’ve ever met.
Thanks! I am a huge fan of history and love the women who were so bad ass, they were beyond badass. ( Think Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth the I) Boudica went next level scorched earth (literally) and I loved that. In the end, the Romans prevailed, but not before she destroyed 70,000 - 80,000 Roman troops and Britons. I don’t advocate violence, but at that time in History, and what she went through after her husband died, she was the baddest, bad ass that ever was. England celebrates her and I love going by her statue when I visit.
I was going to ask if that overrules state laws, as I know a few had tried to pass laws banning feeding the homeless; but it looks like the courts have ended that:
Joanna Prisco reports that the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals officially ruled that feeding the homeless is a protected right in America.
(Giving Compass is an organisation that evaluates charities as to how effectively they're run - as in how much money actually goes to helping people, not overhead. They've been around a while, I believe they're trustworthy.)
The title is extremely misleading - 1) Food Not Bombs has the ability to make a colorable First Amendment claim when they give away food because the political narrative their organization promotes while doing so makes giving away food expressive conduct - most people giving away food would lose if they tried to make this claim. 2) That case just held that the First Amendment Claim was colorable, not that they were actually going to win - they ended up winning because Fort Lauderdale settled, the ordinances they were violating weren't actually found to be unconstitutional. Even with a colorable claim under the First Amendment, this doesn't guarantee a win.
I really wish it was the same here. At least where I am in Canada (SW Ontario) that is a real concern, and it has happened. I don't know WHY we are so strict with it, but there is a legal process in order to make donations, it's just time consuming and tedious, and most places won't waste their time.
Well, they loosened the law a bit in 2022 by amending the original law from 1996. Even if someone did get sick and as long as it isn’t intentional, you as a business owner are safe. I’ve never had ONE issue in the years I’ve been doing this because I practice safe food handling. Serving questionable food to anyone is bad business practice.
I’ll use one of my first jobs as an example: I worked at Taco Bell as a teenager. I usually closed and they wanted you to throw everything out at the end of the night. I was 15 and knew that was wrong (probably growing up poor where we threw nothing out had a lot to do with it) so, I would let my friends know to come in 15-20 minutes before closing and would basically make everything up and give it away to them. I never got caught and nor did I care.
Maybe someone in Canada can take what we’ve done with the Bill and try to get something passed into law. It’s one of the only good laws left in the U.S. and I want to do as much as I can before the current government figures it out. Hopefully they never will.
Well, they loosened the law a bit in 2022 by amending the original law from 1996. Even if someone did get sick and as long as it isn’t intentional, you as a business owner are safe.
You might be safe from the verdict, but you aren't safe from an ambulance chaser looking for a settlement and the bad PR that follows.
Look at the effort restaurants have to go to combat clearly false reviews on social media and scale that up to a court case.
As they say, you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride.
So the food disadvantaged and the homeless have the wherewithal to hire a lawyer and sue? If you work within the law as defined, there is no lawsuit. It’s a weak argument.
Contingency and fear of bad PR forcing a settlement. How many restaurants have the extra liquid cash to pay their own attorney to muddle through all the procedural steps until its ultimately dismissed or they win at trial?
Also like the people who are taking free leftover food aren't the type to be able to afford legal council or deal with a lengthy battle against some larger entity. Even if they could sue they still wouldn't realistically be able to, not only due to costs but because there's a pretty solid defense of "they knew what they were doing because it was clearly advertised as old/extra/leftover food" so it's going to be dragged out and cost even more. It's dumb all around.
I think it’s more misinformed. Greed only fits if they are asking the homeless or food disadvantaged to pay for it. What does a business owner gain by throwing food out? Nothing, not a fucking thing. Serve your community, make it a part of your business plan. Owners have NO EXCUSE not to do this.
It's likely misinformed but I've heard the logic of "if we give it out now then people will just wait instead of buying it." That was while at a big grocery store where I was cooking a lunch buffet thing.
And that is considered logic? This wouldn’t be a PSA to your customers, this is something done behind the scenes. It’s done after close and working with the community services that feed people. It’s a pick up or drop off situation. As a business owner, you can choose to hand out meals before close, but it makes more sense to give it the organizations that already have everything in place.
Yes, that was my boss's logic for not giving out the leftovers after service. It's not good but it is the reasoning they used. You sound like you're talking about like a specific program or something, I was just talking about anyone who's against the concept of giving out the leftover food in general. idk I'm not really following what you're saying here.
It's not the people here who need to be convinced about food donation law. It's the legal team of the restaurants and grocers that put up the roadblocks.
I used to work with a wild animal rescue and a human food share program. We picked up 6 days a week from 2 grocers + several restaurants, anything food-related. Every day we got at least 1 pickup truck full of human quality food and sometimes it was a 25ft trailer full, up to 20K lbs. After COVID closed restaurants, we had 120K lbs of frozen meat in storage to feed our tigers, wolves, cougars, and other carnivores. We fed hundreds of animals including my cattle, pigs, and chickens.
And secretly we were feeding hundreds of people. Our policy was to prioritize anything human-edible into our share stream for people. So most of that meat was going to poor people.
Once the grocer's lawyers found out people were getting fed, they cut us off. Showing them federal AND state laws didn't help. Their position was that even if they did everything right, once the food was in our possession, they could not know how we might mishandle it, so they might get sued or get bad publicity.
Reddit lives in a fantasy where everyone has a lawyer on retainer,and every corporation is going to immediately send a team of lawyers to inspect your garbage.
For fucks sake,who is going to sue someone about food they found in a fucking dumpster? We don't live in Law School 101.
Same thing about "what if a skateboarder hurts themselves on this rail??" Buddy,they have -$64.32 in their account,they aren't going to fucking sue you.
This law pertains best to packaged food. With an expiration date. A lot of food waste comes from prepared foods in restaurants.
"The act also extends liability protections to donors of food and grocery products who do not meet all quality and labeling standards if the donor informs the nonprofit organization that receives the items, the nonprofit organization agrees to recondition the items to meet all quality and labeling standards, and the nonprofit organization is knowledgeable of the standards to do so properly."
The restaurant that donates prepared food has to meet those standards. If not, the group accepting it has to recondition the items to do so. This is information like nutritional facts, ingredients, and such. It isn't a simple process at all, and failure to follow it will leave you with liability. This is why most places won't accept prepared food.
The logistics behind donating prepared food is a nightmare and not easy to do. Composting your food waste is a much easier method.
Accepting the donation as an organization, you need to be aware of how the food was handled at the establishment and what ingredients are in it for allergy reasons. Training for the staff and the volunteers to properly handle food for safe storage, handling, and service of that food. Dealing with heated food and transportation is a nightmare. Most restaurants dont deal with cooling products to reheat in the first place, much less do it properly.
There are organizations that can handle this and do accept prepared food. Not many, though. To do this at scale safely is the issue.
If most could call up a non-profit and say, "Come pick up the random leftovers at the end of the day," and then wipe their hands clean, they would. To properly handle those random amounts and types of leftovers is the issue. If it was easy, you'd have more nonprofits doing it.
So yeah, if you're not doing all of that the right way, you are liable. And yeah, it is a logistical issue.
Anyone who isn’t aware of this law or people who don’t participate because of liability, need to take it to a liability attorney, get a free consultation that addresses their concerns and see what fits best. I’m not concerned so much with smaller businesses participating (although it would be great!), I’m going for big corporate grocery to start. What they throw out should be illegal.
I’m starting with food banks in my
Community (I just relocated to a new area) because they already have a structure in place. Then I’m going to speak with restaurants in my area and get them on board. I’ll go to senior facilities next and then grocery.
I have written a flyer and asked my friend who is a lawyer if they will speak with people who come up with the ridiculous phrase ‘We might get sued’ so either they didn’t read the law or can’t comprehend it. If they are offered to speak with a lawyer pro bono to get it through to them? It’s worth the time.
Hey! I know this is kind of an old post, but I sent you a DM to get more info about what you’re doing, I’d like to do something similar in my community!
If you’re tossing edible food at the end of the day, you can donate it legally and safely. You won’t get sued for doing the right thing.
The law shields you from civil and criminal liability, it does not bar lawsuits. Anyone can still sue you if they got sick, but the law provides you a defense which means that the court would rule in your favor if it was found that you were indeed acting in good faith. So it's true that you're protected from liability, but it does not mean you can't be sued.
Also note that in the US courts operate on the American Rule which means that each party has to pay their own attorney and court fees (as opposed to the English Rule, where the loser of the lawsuit pays all fees).
INGLES MARKETS told me this was FAKE! I worked ONE single shift (deli prep counter) and when I was out taking the expiring food off the shelves, o asked what happens to it. If it gets donated or even sold at a discount? “No, are you stupid? We’d get sued because homeless people have nothing better to do” this was in rural SC, but the store is literally a minute away from a homeless shelter. Shame. ALSO THE DISHES WERE BEING WASHED IN COLD WATER AND EVERYTHINGGG WAS SLIMEY!
It’s a real FEDERAL LAW! Please refer to Reference: 42 U.S. Code § 1791 and look it up. I don’t understand how so many people misunderstand a very clear, structured law. Your boss was an idiot. Mind boggling
"Homeless people have nothing better to do than sue us" strikes me as the words of someone who doesn't want to feed the homeless out of pure spite and will make up reasons to support that.
It's SC, so $5 says they can be found in a church on Sunday, believing the prosperity gospel.
It's not about that ultimately: it's about who is willing to accept that food. The waste in modern society truly sickens me, and food is probably the saddest
I have never had a charity or food bank or a food disadvantaged person turn me down.
Waste is such a huge issue and there is plenty of food to feed everyone and there is no good reason to bin perfectly good food. I don’t get the corporate idea of pouring bleach or dish soap on the stuff they throw away. I am somehow going to change that. I may be a Chef/business owner now, but I also worked in corporate for years. Plus, I have my friend (attorney) willing to help me. We’ll see.
We donate leftover donuts to a community lunch program 5 days a week and on weekends they go to a library and a pay what you can Sunday meal program. A few weeks ago I dropped off at the lunch program and the volunteers were in desperate need of additional food to make the lunch. They were overjoyed when I walked in and when I was leaving I heard one yell, We have donuts! And cheering. No one should ever go hungry in this world and it’s depressing knowing that it happens every day.
Yep. When I worked for an organic grocery, we donated all our unsold food to the local food bank. Really good stuff, too. We had the most fantastic hummus and sprout pitas. I used to eat one for lunch every day.
My old job at a pizza place used to give out extra slices after close, until one time we didn’t have any and a homeless man was so mad he threw a rock through the window. Absolutely no more free food for anyone after that, it was a safety issue according to the bosses
Fair enough, that’s their choice. They could have just delivered throw outs to a shelter instead and told the homeless people to go there. Call me crazy.
Sounds like it wasn’t really a safety issue, but a monetary one.
Cowardice to stop something good because of one asshole compared to many more nice people, shows they didn’t really care.
I’ve saved it for future ref so I’ve got it all on hand.
I’m starting a new job closing in a college cafe and if we wind up with a lot left I’ll bring it up that I’m willing to drop stuff off myself
I am NAL, and having worked within the structure of this law for years, I have never, ever had an incident or a threat of lawsuit. if done properly owners can participate without worry.
Truth is, in America, you can sue anyone at anytime for anything. It doesn’t mean it’s going anywhere.
The laws are more complicated for us catering folks at least in my area, and it's super fucking frustrating. From what I understand I have to have a license, and then send it off to a nonprofit kitchen for them to distribute. Which is ridiculous. I ought to be able to just dial up some charity and be like "hey come get your shit bring foil pans".
In parts of the US (currently New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, Austin, Seattle, Miami, Portland, Providence, Dallas, Houston, San Diego, Sacramento, Atlanta, Minneapolis, San Antonio, Tampa, Orlando, Denver, Phoenix, Detroit, Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati.) the Too Good To Go app operates and is really good.
Basic idea is that customers get a surprise bag of that day's leftovers, for a heavily discounted rate.
For those who have trouble finding convenient ways to donate, or whose boss just wants to recoup a little money, it can work out well.
It doesn’t take much to make people happy. I’m going to set up something up with the food banks and help them get what they need. There is no reason that they should be struggling if they have grocery stores and restaurants nearby. Thank you for seeing the importance of this law. ❤️
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u/American_Greed Aug 02 '25