Restaurants generate millions of tons of surplus food every year, yet less than 1% of that food is ever donated, according to ReFED.
A new tool from Food Rescue US, a national nonprofit, is addressing this issue by making it easier for restaurants to donate excess food to food banks, pantries, and other nonprofits. Food Rescue US created the tool in partnership with Toast, a provider of automated payments to restaurants, using funding from a ReFED grant. The three organizations announced the new tool at New York City’s Javits Center during Climate Week NYC (see photo, top).
Food Rescue US, which mobilizes more than 30,000 volunteers to pick up and transport food that would otherwise go to waste, has saved more than 206 million meals across 25 states to date. But relatively little of that has come from restaurants. “There’s not really a lot of food recovery happening for restaurants, particularly quick service restaurants,” said Joe Robbins, Chief Product Officer at Food Rescue US. “It really is an underserved market.”
One of the biggest challenges to increasing restaurant donations comes down to sheer convenience, Robbins said. Before DonorLink, Food Rescue US tested its own version of food donation software for restaurants, but quickly hit the road block of restaurant workers not having time to log onto a separate system. “We actually had a guy say, ‘Listen, no matter how cool the platform is or no matter how easy to use it is, you just don’t have the time to get a second software system,’” Robbins said.
Restaurants have limited cold storage, and rely on quick decision-making to keep their operations running smoothly. Holding onto donations for long periods of time presents issues. “The external challenge is always just the time they have to spend coordinating with us,” said Robbins, including “making sure the pickups are going out on time.”
Instead of convincing restaurants to adopt a second software platform, the tool for donating food is now directly integrated in the Toast system and available for free, removing many of the earlier challenges. Over 100,000 restaurants already use Toast as a point of sale system. That’s “what was probably the most compelling” about DonorLink, said Angel Veza, Director of Innovation and Strategic Capital at ReFED. “Just how seamless this was able to integrate into their operations and enable restaurants to donate more at a more frequent pace.”
Before releasing DonorLink to the public, eight beta testers logged about 400 pickups through the Toast integration during a six-month period. “A lot of these restaurants have increased the number of pickups that they’re scheduling, and that’s partially because of that quick turnaround time,” said Robbins. For food banks and pantries looking to receive donations from restaurants using DonorLink, this means smaller, and more frequent deliveries of fresh or prepared food. “It’s in transit for maybe 15 minutes on average,” said Robbins.
When location-eligible food banks and pantries sign up for food donations through the Food Rescue US app, they determine the types of food they can receive, as well as answer questions like: “Do you have a loading dock? Do you have cold storage?” For fresh and prepared food donations, only facilities that request those would be eligible to receive them from a restaurant.
DonorLink is officially live in all 25 states that Food Rescue US operates, and Robbins hopes the functionality will help it expand its service area to the entire country, reaching more restaurants, food banks and pantries. To help donors understand their impact, DonorLink also calculates the amount of carbon offset by each donation, which would otherwise end up in a landfill.
The project’s success will ultimately rely on the number of donors using DonorLink, and the number of food banks and pantries that are receiving the additional food. For now, the data seems hopeful. From ReFED’s perspective, it just might be “the shift between food donation being heroic, to food donation being the standard” in restaurants, said Veza. – Sidney Slon
Sidney Slon is a graduate student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. He was a 2026 summer intern at Food Bank News, and has previously reported for the New York City News Service, U.S. News and World Report, and City Limits.
PHOTO, TOP: Joe Robbins of Food Rescue US, right, speaking at the Climate Week NYC event introducing DonorLink, along with Angel Veza of ReFED, center, and Jacqueline Martin of Toast. Photo credit: Sidney Slon
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