When it comes to the best ways for businesses to tackle food waste, directly engaging and empowering the staff closest to daily operations is essential for improving efficiency, reducing costs, and meeting sustainability goals. To harness the power of employee feedback and training, the U.S. Food Waste Pact, a joint initiative of ReFED and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), rolled out food waste reduction competitions at several signatory sites to identify meaningful, actionable solutions.
The competitions piloted interactive food waste training and education, an employee idea generation challenge, and the implementation of a winning employee idea at two manufacturing and 10 foodservice sites across the United States. More than two years after the initial pilots, the Pact team spoke with its signatories who participated in the competitions—manufacturers Bob’s Red Mill and Del Monte, and foodservice operator Aramark—to learn about the lasting impacts that employee engagement, training, and buy-in brought to efforts to reduce food waste in everyday business operations.
Small changes, big food waste wins
A key outcome in the food waste competitions is the concept of a “quick win,” a relatively small adjustment with large potential to significantly reduce unnecessarily discarded food. In the years after the initial food waste pilots, all three signatories confirm that implementing a seemingly small food waste reduction idea in daily operations has major ripple effects—on both company culture and overall production efficiency.
“When you think about just everything that’s going on at a large food manufacturing facility like this, it’s a pretty vast ocean of possibilities,” says Matthew Horn, Senior Process Engineer at Bob’s Red Mill, the international grain brand which operates a 283,000 square-foot manufacturing plant at its world headquarters in Milwaukie, Oregon. “The idea of being able to make an observation, escalate it to a cross-functional team, who have ways to affect how things go and then how processes are built and then practiced. It gives people a little bit of hope.”
The whole-grain manufacturer partnered with the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment (PCFWC) and TripleWin Advisory (a corporate sustainability consultancy) to roll out the employee engagement challenge from May to October 2022. The winning employee idea, one of 176 submitted during Bob’s Red Mill’s initial challenge, was simple at first glance and involved retightening bolts securing a metal screen atop a conveyor that fills grain buckets, which prevented overflow of grains onto the floor. It was first applied to one line at the company’s principal manufacturing site, and achieved successful results.
In the four years since the initial pilot, Bob’s Red Mill has made similar screw adjustments and specification alignments across other lines in its facility. In 2025, they repurposed nearly 3,000 tons of food waste. “People really find that ownership meaningful, and they’re engaged to make improvements, knowing that that bottom line is their bottom line,” Horn explains, referencing a unique aspect of staff engagement at the 100% employee-owned business.
Another signatory of the Pact and PCFWC, Fresh Del Monte, received almost 200 food waste ideas in its Opportunity Registry upon completing the competition in collaboration with TripleWin Advisory, from March to August 2024, at one of its fresh-cut manufacturing plants in North Portland, Oregon. Three employee ideas, all involving the same winning waste-reduction opportunity, encompassed moving the inspection location from outside the facility to a food-safe receiving area inside the facility, which recovered an average yield of 52.3% usable fresh-cut fruit commodities, including watermelon, pineapple, mango, honeydew, and cantaloupe. Across all five commodities, the plant recovered an average of 54 pounds of food per day as a result of the adjustment.
Following the employee competition, Fresh Del Monte has focused on replicating the intervention across other manufacturing facilities. The change of fresh-cut fruit receiving location has now been rolled out at two other manufacturing facilities since the initial pilot, and Del Monte plans to roll out the QA receiving change across 11 other fresh-cut facilities in the U.S., and eventually at international sites.
In addition to manufacturing environments, food waste reduction is a big focus and opportunity in foodservice operations, where culinary teams work in a dynamic environment with changing ingredients, menus, guest preferences, and fluctuations in diner volume. As a result, successful food waste reduction strategies must be flexible and tailored to each operation rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach. Aramark, a leading foodservice provider and Pact signatory, participated in its own food waste competition pilot from August 2024 to January 2025 at several of its kitchens across LifeWorks Restaurant Group and Collegiate Hospitality. While most participating sites were operated by Aramark, the pilot also included several non-Aramark foodservice operations, providing an opportunity to test employee engagement approaches across different operating models. The R&DE Stanford Food Institute, which is a Pact signatory, served in a consultant role to lead this pilot.
The initial pilot spurred and continues to encourage greater employee engagement around food waste. Across the 10 participating sites in the pilot, 215 employees engaged in the initiative and submitted 181 food waste reduction ideas, demonstrating the value of frontline participation in identifying practical solutions. Many of the most promising outcomes centered on culinary strategies such as repurposing surplus ingredients, upcycling food into new menu items, and refining portioning practices to better align production with demand. Teams also shared ideas for improving communication inventory visibility, including LifeWorks’ shared shelf initiative, helping kitchens identify and use ingredients before they become surplus. Linking food waste tonnage to associated food costs has also been critical. For example, using Leanpath, a waste-tracking tool for kitchens, has helped one of LifeWorks’participating sites cut surplus food and adjust menus accordingly, resulting in significant savings.
Creating a company culture invested in cutting food waste
Implementing behavioral, systematic, and procedural changes of any kind often comes with a learning curve, and implementing food waste solutions is no different. Training and open communication with employees both play a pivotal role in implementing solutions and fostering a culture of food waste reduction and employee engagement. For each of the three signatories, continuous training and training resources have been key.
Chef Zachary Viohl, who led the pilot at one of LifeWorks’ sites, recalls the effort it took to initially get employees excited about food waste. But incorporating sustainability training into onboarding and sharing food waste and cost data with kitchen employees has increased transparency and helped integrate food waste best practices into regular operations since the initial competition. “There’s always a stigma associated with waste, and we’ve taken away that stigma,” Viohl explains. “Transparency behind the line, behind the trash can, was very important.”
Addressing the “why” behind food waste reduction efforts is paramount to maintaining employee engagement and ensuring lasting shifts in company culture. According to Del Monte, training and open communication among employees have been essential to recovering fresh fruit at QA receiving across its manufacturing plants, each of which poses unique challenges, including varying floor layouts and space constraints. “After the big project that we did [at the pilot site], the communication was: everybody can bring ideas and suggest a trial, change things,” says Santos Coria, Quality Manager at Del Monte. Coria also noted that new employee orientation now includes QA receiving training on monitoring and reducing raw fruit food waste.
At Bob’s Red Mill, sustainability efforts have expanded beyond food waste since the employee engagement competition. Julia Person, Sustainability Manager at Bob’s Red Mill, specifically describes a company culture shift to a “scrap mentality” in daily operations—extending into manufacturing aspects and resources like trouble with weights, repacked materials, discarded packaging bags, or keeping a line running unnecessarily. “Basically for everything that moves through our facility, not just food, we have that same kind of scrap mentality. From when we did the pilot until now, I’ve definitely seen that grow and grow,” Person notes.
The Pact signatory achieved an impressive 100% diversion rate of food waste, and became TRUE Gold certified for zero waste in 2025. Continued food waste training has been pivotal, and the team at Bob’s Red Mill plans to roll out a new food waste learning module this year. One of the key areas of focus for the new training module is center-lining, or standardizing machine settings and operator best practices across manufacturing lines. When such changes are applied—and sustained—across lines, businesses can see exponential decreases in food waste numbers and the associated costs of discarded food.
Putting the “sustain” in “sustainability”: keeping employees engaged
The initial food waste pilots fostered excitement and action around food waste reduction among the employees closest to operations. For all three signatories, cross-functional team collaboration continues to maintain food waste momentum, generate new ideas, and sustain food waste process improvements. For participants in the initial pilots, food waste-focused groups and activities have been essential for keeping both employees and business leadership motivated about food waste.
Del Monte’s Food Waste Working Group tracks and analyzes waste generated across all facilities and countries within the business’ network, with a specific goal of reducing all food waste sent to landfill by 40%. (The signatory already achieved that goal globally in 2025.) At Bob’s Red Mill, 13 team members make up the Scrap Team, a cross-functional group that meets monthly to discuss and implement ongoing food waste reduction efforts. For Aramark, the competition complemented existing food waste management efforts by creating new opportunities for frontline associates to identify, share, and test waste reduction ideas. Building on that momentum, LifeWorks is currently rolling out a Sustainability Champion program at some of its corporate sites to empower employees to be leaders of waste reduction at their site. Many LifeWorks sites even host Low Waste Chef’s Tables to share food waste reduction ideas and recipes with guests.
Collaborating on food waste solutions and discussing how the business is tracking toward its food waste reduction goals on a month-to-month basis keep employees invested and engaged on the Scrap Team at Bob’s Red Mill. “We’re all in different roles, but coming together on the Scrap Team helps us gain skills and confidence in different areas,” Julia at Bob’s Red Mill says, also noting the career development opportunities and eye-opening cross-functional synergies, such as pairing the financial implications with the food waste data.
Though the role of a foodservice kitchen chef may look different from that of a line operator in manufacturing, training, education, and cross-functional employee engagement are key to sustained change across food businesses and production models. “I think with food waste, you don’t just set it and forget it,” says Caroline Baloga, Sustainability Manager at LifeWorks Restaurant Group, a division of Aramark, highlighting that reducing food waste and keeping employees engaged is an active process.
By building on the insights from the initial food waste competition pilots, any food business can engage their employees in food waste reduction work, driving significant impact on the bottom line, sustainability goals, and collaborative company cultures.
Ready to engage your employees in food waste reduction efforts? Get started with the Employee Engagement Toolkit, an open-source toolkit with free English and Spanish resources to train teams, and learn more about joining the U.S. Food Waste Pact.