Posted by Julia on Sep 23rd 2025
How You Can Help Prevent Food Waste (and Feed Others While Doing It!)
The Food Waste Epidemic
What is causing this staggering amount of food waste? There are many reasons, including spoilage at every stage of production and storage and handling issues during supply chain movement. But one of the biggest reasons, especially in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) sector, is the lack of consumer knowledge regarding date labels on packaging.
"More than 80 percent of Americans discard perfectly good food because they misunderstand expiration labels," RTS Food Waste Guide.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Food Marketing Institute, and Harvard University have combined efforts to streamline expiration labels about the quality and safety of food. Two phrases simplify how you can tell what’s still good to consume:
BEST IF USED BY (or BB) describes quality “where the product may not taste or perform as expected but is safe to consume”
USE BY (or EXP) applies to “the few products that are highly perishable and/or have food safety concern over time.”
Understanding these date labels will ensure that food doesn't go to waste needlessly. Here at TC Farm, we continue to find innovative ways to fight food waste and our latest initiative involves YOU, our TC Farm members!
Food for Thought: While the world wastes about 1.4 billion tons of food every year, the United States discards more food than any other country in the world: nearly 40 million tons — 80 billion pounds — every year. That’s estimated to be 30-40 percent of the entire US food supply and equates to 219 pounds of waste per person.
How TC Farm is Fighting Food Waste
Over the past few years, we've found many ways to mitigate and prevent food waste at TC Farm. These methods include:
- Weekly donation to local food shelf
- Composting
- Kitchen production of ready-to-eat meals
- TC Feeds donations
- Take Home for TC Farm employees
Too Good to Go (app that allows us to sell weekly leftovers at a fraction of the price)
But as we continue to grow and offer more products to become your one-stop grocery store of choice, we find ourselves asking what more could we do to educate ourselves and our consumers about food waste and how we can fight it together.
Since joining the Too Good to Go app a year ago, TC Farm has saved 476 meals from going to the landfill! Now, we're inspired to continue this fight against food waste by introducing our new food rescue bundles and you can help us out! Read on for more details on these new bundle deals!
How You Can Help Prevent Food Waste and Feed Local Families in Need
- Each bundle will include enough products for 3-4 people and will be themed by type: gluten-free, beverages only, dairy free, snacks etc.
- Bundle items will vary depending on availability of products and will be a surprise to the buyer
- No items with past "Use By" or "Expires By" dates will be included
- Bundles will be priced at up to 55% off their full retail price value
- Each sale will generate a $5 donation to the TC Feeds Foundation
- All sales of these bundles are final and non-refundable
According to the USDA, "The best approach to reducing food loss and waste is not to create it in the first place. .. If excess food is unavoidable, recover it to donate to hunger-relief organizations so that they can feed people in need."
By working together, we can reduce food waste and increase food accessability for local families in need. It's a win-win solution and we hope you're as excited for this new venture as we are!
Here are some examples of what you could receive in a Food Rescue bundle! Some weeks, there may be dairy items or even produce- but they'll always be great quality grocery products that you'd find on our website!
Keep an eye out for our new Food Rescue Bundles coming in October!