Thirty-five kilos a month of the food leaving this kitchen is still food: prepared, never served, and perfectly good at the moment somebody decides what to do with it. Giving it to a person is the highest use available after not producing it — and it is also the part of this course with real rules attached, so it starts with the warning rather than ending with it.
⚠️ Read this part first
The rules on donating food, and the liability that comes with it, vary by country and often by region — and they change. Many places have laws that protect a business donating food in good faith; some have conditions attached; some have none of it. What is required of you in terms of records, temperatures, transport and labelling is equally local.
So before you organise anything: ask the organisation you intend to donate to, because they do this constantly and will know the local position better than any general guide; and check with your own local authority or a professional if the amounts are significant. This course can tell you how the operation works in a kitchen. It cannot tell you what the law says where you are, and any book that claims to is guessing.
The second condition is not legal but absolute: the food safety rules do not relax because food is being given away. Temperatures, holding times, cooling, labelling and what may never be re-served are the food safety courses' subject and they apply identically. Donated food that makes somebody ill is worse than donated food that never existed, for the person and for you.
✅ What can and cannot go
With those two conditions in place, the practical division is straightforward and it is the same in most kitchens.
| Usually yes | Usually no |
| Prepared food that was never served, held correctly and within its time | Anything that reached a table |
| Whole, unopened products in date | Anything out of date or of unknown history |
| Bread and baked goods from today | Food that has been through the temperature danger zone |
| Surplus raw ingredients, in their packaging | Anything you would not personally serve tomorrow |
That last line is the one that decides the borderline cases. If you would hesitate to serve it to a paying guest, it does not become acceptable because it is free — the person receiving it deserves the same standard, and the whole arrangement depends on that being obviously true.
The overproduction category from topic 1 is where most of the volume is: the prepared dishes that were made for a service that turned out quieter than expected. Twenty-three kilos a month, already cooked, already cooled correctly if your kitchen is running properly, and currently going into a bin.
📦 Making it work without it becoming a burden
Most restaurant donation arrangements fail for logistical reasons rather than principled ones: it is nobody's job, it happens at the worst hour, and there is nowhere to put anything. Four decisions solve almost all of it.
- One partner, not several. A single organisation with a predictable routine is worth more than three ad-hoc arrangements. Food banks, shelters, community kitchens and the surplus-redistribution charities that operate in many cities all work this way.
- A fixed time, on your terms. Collection after close, or a drop-off on a day somebody is already going that way. A pickup at seven on a Friday will be missed and then resented.
- Containers that come back. Agree whose they are and how they return, or you will quietly be buying containers every week — which the first course of this group would have something to say about.
- One named person, with a backup, exactly as the kitchen course required for every other change. "The kitchen" does not remember to do this on a Saturday.
Then the record: date, what, roughly how much, and who took it. It takes thirty seconds, it is what any local requirement will ask for, it feeds the kilos in topic 5, and it is the only way to know later whether this is worth the effort. Keep it in the same place as the waste log the cost control course started.
🐖 Animals, and the other outlets
Below feeding people on the ladder is feeding animals, and it is worth two sentences of caution: in many jurisdictions feeding catering waste to livestock is restricted or forbidden, for disease-control reasons that are entirely reasonable. Where it is permitted, it is usually through a specific arrangement with a specific farmer under specific conditions — so it belongs to the same "ask first" category as donation, and it is not something to start because somebody offered to take a bucket.
Two other outlets are worth knowing about, both of which sit between selling and giving. Surplus-food apps let a restaurant sell what is left at the end of a service at a low price to somebody who comes to collect it: real money for food that was going to be lost, at a commission, with the same questions the delivery course taught you to ask about any platform. And staff, formally: a policy that lets the team take surplus home, written down rather than winked at, avoids both the waste and the quiet resentment of watching good food go into a bin.
None of these replaces the top of the ladder. Twenty-three kilos of overproduction a month means somebody prepped for a Friday that behaved like a Tuesday, and the forecast that fixes that lives in the sales analytics course. Donation is what you do with the residue after that work is done — not instead of it.