Food waste represents a massive loss of both product and revenue for food businesses. In 2023 alone, the retail, foodservice, and manufacturing sectors generated more than $217 billion in surplus food—accounting for 41% of the total 73.9 million tons produced that year.

Reducing food waste isn’t just good for the planet—it’s good business. Food companies have an incentive to act, and doing so delivers measurable sustainability progress while improving bottom lines.

And today, an increasing number of companies are taking action. In fact, 20% of the top 65 food businesses across foodservice, retail, and manufacturing have set specific, time-bound food waste reduction targets. But achieving these goals requires more than just interpreting data—it demands aligning cross-functional teams, navigating competing priorities, and understanding where a company stands in an increasingly competitive landscape. Recognizing the complexity and scale of this challenge, ReFED created its Business Services team to help companies turn ambitious waste reduction goals into sustainable, high-impact results.

1. Who uses ReFED’s Business Services?

ReFED’s Business Services is designed for any industrial- or commercial-scale entity generating food waste—from farmers and processors to restaurants, retailers, and even municipalities—who have, or want to develop, a food waste reduction goal. In addition to supporting businesses, the team also partners with local governments and community organizations to drive regional impact—for example, collaborating with the Park City Chamber of Commerce to host a workshop where eight local restaurants created actionable food waste reduction plans.

Clients include well-known brands such as Chick-fil-A, Amazon, Whole Foods, and Wawa.

Businesses come to ReFED at all stages of their food waste reduction journey—whether they’re creating their first commitment or looking to strengthen an existing plan or broader sustainability initiative. ReFED’s Business Services meets companies where they are, helping to build clear roadmaps for progress.

2. What does ReFED’s Business Services do?

Typically, Business Services begins by collaborating with corporate sustainability teams that want to demonstrate the financial, operational, and environmental value of addressing food waste within their operations. These teams share internal food waste data for analysis, which ReFED then combines with its own extensive data, insights, and network of solution providers—companies and organizations with data-backed methods for reducing food waste who are available for partnerships—to develop a customized strategy.

Through this process, ReFED provides:

• Actionable insights grounded in data

• Deep food waste expertise and industry partnerships

• Strategies for building internal alignment, securing resources, and accelerating solution adoption

Once insights are gathered, Business Services convenes cross-functional leaders from across the organization, ensuring everyone understands how food waste reduction applies to their specific roles, the material and financial benefits of action, and the shared plan for implementation.

3. How does ReFED’s Business Services drive progress on food waste reduction?

Partners move from insights to action through three key pillars:

• Capacity Building – For businesses in the early stages of developing a food waste reduction strategy, ReFED offers comprehensive education—providing targeted resources, sector-specific strategies, and best practices to build internal capacity. From workshops to guidance on data collection methodology, we help organizations grow awareness and momentum at every stage of their journey.

• Custom Analytics – Using tools from ReFED’s Insights Engine, we deliver industry benchmarks and tailored analytics that help businesses identify, prioritize, and implement the most effective food waste solutions. Our data-driven tools support collection, reporting, and measurement to drive real progress.

• Strategic Advisory – Drawing on years of experience across the food industry, we offer customized guidance to help businesses address their unique challenges and scale impact. Through targeted support, we help catalyze food waste reduction strategies that deliver measurable financial, social, and environmental results.

4. What does the collaboration process look like in action?

Every engagement begins with understanding where a business is on its food waste journey. Ultimately, we don’t prescribe a rigid playbook—we facilitate action through data. By grounding different teams within a business in a shared understanding of their own data and providing a meaningful framework for further action, we spark alignment, collaboration, and resource allocation that lead to meaningful, lasting progress.

One example is Chick-fil-A, who came to us with a food donation goal but hadn’t yet established a food waste reduction goal. Their sustainability team wanted to ensure any new commitments aligned with brand guidelines and broader organizational priorities.

To help demonstrate the value and feasibility of setting a reduction goal, we began by analyzing their sales and operations data to show the financial and strategic impact of food waste within their operations. We ran this data through our proprietary models to produce a custom roadmap report and facilitated an initial workshop to explore whether a food waste reduction goal was the right next step.

As part of that roadmap, we used ReFED’s Insights Engine to model the impact of different solutions and hosted a second workshop to walk through the results. This cross-functional brainstorming session included sustainability, operations, and finance teams and focused on prioritizing next steps for achieving a food waste reduction goal and dividing resources effectively.

While many of the businesses we work with are already leading in food waste reduction, we also recognize the importance of supporting smaller organizations that may be earlier in their journey. For example, through our partnership with the Park City Chamber of Commerce, we found that many of the participating restaurants initially viewed waste reduction only through the lens of donation or composting. Through our session, they began to see the powerful impact of prevention strategies.

5. How can I learn more about Business Services?

Our dedicated Business Services page gives an overview of how the team works with partners to create tailored strategies that identify data-driven, actionable ways to reduce waste and create measurable impact.

You can also:

• Read this spotlight on our work with Chick-Fil-A in Restaurant Dive

• See what our work with municipalities looks like by reading about our award-winning partnership with the Park City Chamber of Commerce

• Catch ReFED’s Business Services lead David Ly at the 2025 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit