Key Takeaways
Partnerships reveal what’s hidden. Shared data and collaboration expose waste hotspots that individual companies can’t always see alone.
Design and flexibility drive solutions. Adjusting specs, packaging, and product use creates new value from food waste.
Collaboration scales impact. Industry alliances like the U.S. Food Waste Pact turn pilot projects into replicable, systemwide change.
Food waste doesn’t happen in just one place. It's created—and can be prevented—at multiple points across the supply chain.
That’s why collaboration matters. Partnerships among retailers, suppliers, distributors, and foodservice companies are uncovering shared inefficiencies and scaling solutions.
As Tara Dalton of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) explained during the ReFED 2025 Food Waste Solutions Summit session The Power of Partnership: Connecting the Supply Chain to Solve Sticky Problems:
“A whole chain project takes one commodity and engages businesses across the supply chain to map the losses, identify root causes, and then explore solutions together.”
Whole chain studies by the U.S. Food Waste Pact, a joint initiative between ReFED and WWF, and the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment have revealed just how much is being lost before food ever reaches shelves or kitchens:
Fresh plums: up to 60% loss on farm
Strawberries: 36% loss on farm, with roughly 25% edible but not marketable
Frozen potatoes: 21–38% loss at processing facilities
Ground beef: 45% of processor waste caused by product falling to the floor
Yogurt: 40% of distribution center/retail losses due to expired products
By mapping losses collaboratively, partners uncover the “blind spots” where one company’s specs, packaging, or processes can unintentionally create waste for another.
What does partnership look like in practice? The following examples show how collaboration across the supply chain is reducing food waste—and turning it into opportunity.
1) Partnerships in Action: How Walmart Turns Waste into Value
Real-world challenge
With operations in 19 countries and over two million associates, Walmart sits at the center of countless supply chains. That scale brings enormous opportunity to prevent food waste wherever it occurs. As Chris Franke, Senior Manager of Global Sustainability at Walmart, explained, partnerships are key:
“When we start talking about food, it cross-cuts everything we do. Partnerships are absolutely key for someone with our scale.”
Through the whole chain project, Walmart uncovered a major opportunity. During a strawberry whole-chain pilot, the team found that perfectly edible “snack-size” berries were being left behind simply because they didn’t meet retail size specifications.
“They just weren’t meeting retail spec for being big enough,” said Franke. “Snack-sized strawberries that didn’t fit our assumption of what customers wanted were going to waste.”
Working with partners and a Great Value private-label supplier, Walmart redirected those small berries into strawberry jam—turning a loss into a product.
“We found a way to take those small strawberries and turn them into strawberry jam,” Franke explained. “It allowed us to buy more of that crop yield, which means farmers are selling more through a contracted outlet.”
Watch Chris Franke share how collaboration helps Walmart transform food waste into opportunity.
2) Retail Operations + Community Partners: Whole Foods’ Decrease, Donate, Divert Framework
Real-world challenge:
Food waste can build up quickly through daily operations—misjudged orders, short shelf life, or imperfect donation logistics. Whole Foods, which has committed to cutting food waste by 50% by 2030, is tackling the issue from multiple angles across its stores, distribution centers, and supplier partnerships.
The framework:
Whole Foods Market has built a three-part strategy—Decrease, Donate, Divert—to guide its waste reduction work across stores and supply partners.
Decrease: A focus on stopping food waste before it starts through strategies like better ordering as well as markdown alert applications like Too Good To Go—which hit one million meals in the past year—and the in-house Enjoy Today program offering 50% discounts on near-expiring items.
Donate: An initiative to provide edible, surplus food to the charitable food system through a partnership with Food Donation Connection, which manages 5-7 pickups/week from stores.
Divert: A focus on keeping food out of the landfill through diversion strategies like animal feed and composting.
The partnership effect:
Whole Foods’ participation in the U.S. Food Waste Pact’s Whole Chain: Ground Beef Project helped the company better understand where waste occurs and how operational choices at retail affect the supply chain.
“The whole chain project was our first foray into that level of collaboration,” Kaity Robbins, Senior Program Manager of Diversion at Whole Foods Market, explained. “I never dreamed I would know as much as I do now about meat grinding—it’s been eye-opening. It really catalyzed a lot of interesting conversations internally with people I might not otherwise have connected with.”
The project deepened relationships with suppliers like Meyer Natural Foods and helped Whole Foods integrate waste data and reduction goals into its sourcing and category management processes.
Watch Kaity Robbins detail how collaboration plays a role in Whole Foods’ Decrease, Donate, Divert program.
3) Supplier + Retail Packaging Alignment: Meyer Natural Foods and Whole Foods
Real-world challenge:
In the meat industry, even small inefficiencies in processing or packaging can lead to significant waste. At Meyer Natural Foods, “shrink”—the amount of product lost during grinding and packaging—is monitored daily and kept below 1%. Despite that vigilance, waste can still occur downstream.
“There’s a lot of opportunity…to address additional waste in processing, packaging, and at retail,” said Dr. Scott Howard from Meyer.
The partnership and approach:
The Whole Chain: Ground Beef Project helped identify where waste occurs in ground beef production—and how packaging innovations could extend shelf life and reduce spoilage. Vacuum-packed “brick packs” can dramatically reduce exposure to oxygen, slowing discoloration and spoilage.
Why it matters:
The partnership demonstrated the importance of communication and coordination between suppliers, retailers, regulators, and consumers.
“We may sit in the center between the producer and the retailer,” said Howard, “but without connecting the dots on the backside, it’s all in vain for us. Waste reduction has to be collaborative.”
Watch Dr. Scott Howard share how whole chain partnerships help identify opportunities to reduce food waste through production and packaging.
What These Partnerships Show
Across the supply chain, one message was clear: food waste isn’t a single-company problem—it’s a shared systems challenge. Partnerships that blend data, design, and communication are turning waste into opportunity, proving that collaboration accelerates impact faster than any one organization can alone.
“We’re at a good point to really begin to scale this and connect all the dots,” said Gwyneth Rampton of Compass Group. “There’s a win-win-win here for everyone involved—and that’s how real change happens.”
Watch the ReFED 2025 Food Waste Solutions Summit session, The Power of Partnership: Connecting the Supply Chain to Solve Sticky Problems.
Want to learn more about how your business can participate in the U.S. Food Waste Pact? Contact Kristen Lee at [email protected].
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