To most grocery shoppers, rotisserie chickens look like a mouth-watering and easy option for dinner. But whenever I pass by the rotisserie case in a supermarket, I see chicken carcasses piled up in the trash, their once glistening juices congealing into a slimy jelly.
It all started when I was working as a cashier in a chain supermarket. One day, I was chatting with a colleague about the behind-the-scenes secrets that shoppers didn’t see. The deli employee said, “Last night we tossed out about sixteen birds.” He explained that managers wanted the rotisserie chicken case to be full at all times because a full case looked appetizing, while a half empty one looked sad. Keeping the case full was an all-day affair. Workers arrived before dawn to season and roast dozens of birds. (One employee burned his arm while maneuvering chickens into the oven. He quit soon after.)
The seasoning and roasting continued throughout the day. As birds disappeared from the display case, workers replaced them. Finally, the store closed, and the leftover chickens were thrown out.
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Joining the conversation, a bakery employee told me that he was frustrated that between one and two cartloads of fresh bread were tossed out every night. I asked him why the bakery produced more bread than it could sell. “To make the shelves look full!” he said. It turned out that the rotisserie chicken strategy applied across the store.
After I left my cashier position, I researched the supermarket industry to write a book about my job. I discovered that my store was not an outlier. In the US, up to 40 percent of food produced for consumption goes uneaten, which is one reason food is the largest contributor to landfills and accounts for up to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
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Food loss occurs all along the supply chain, from farms, where food is mishandled, to transportation and storage, where it may come into contact with rodents or insects. But according to one USDA study, the supermarket is a major culprit. Each year, about 31 percent of waste—or 133 billion pounds—occurs after food has already reached stores. One reason is exactly what I had observed on the job. Stores over-stock and then toss out anything that doesn’t sell.
Since shoppers prefer undented boxes and unblemished produce, waste often includes edible but imperfect food. A colleague in the produce department at my store had become so disturbed by waste that she started documenting it. She sent me photos of large shopping carts brimming with boxed salad greens. Another cart contained dozens of containers of fresh berries. “We throw out between one and two carts every day,” she said. She explained that it was policy to toss food in the trash about two days before the expiration date.
I wondered why stores didn’t just donate unsold food. Surely food banks would line up to take the items. I learned that donations would require a costly new supply chain to move products out of stores. The fact is that it is often less expensive to throw food out than to give it away. Retail companies are in the business of making money, not feeding people.
Food waste at the supermarket is especially disturbing given that more Americans are hungry today than during the pandemic, and 70 percent of us are struggling to afford basic needs. It’s impossible to keep the cupboard stocked when wages are low and prices are high.
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Food waste is connected to broader economic trends. The food industry employs more people than any other. Disproportionately people of color and immigrants, employees who work on farms and ranches and transport goods earn low wages and have high rates of food insecurity. Retail workers are also shamefully underpaid. A 2022 report by the Economic Roundtable showed that about three-quarters of workers at Kroger, the second-largest grocery company, struggled to keep food on the table. Things have not improved in recent years. Since 2024, grocery worker wages have fallen fifteen percent when adjusted for inflation.
On the job, signs of employee hunger were hard to miss. One colleague told me that, at her previous job, she had marked down the price of some nearly expired ground beef that was about to be thrown in the trash. She had wanted to take the meat home to her family. But when managers found out what she did, they fired her. Another coworker admitted to spending her days off at the plasma clinic to earn money for groceries.
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It’s time that we make the connection between labor conditions in the retail industry and food waste in stores. Companies that don’t pay a living wage can use the money they save to over-stock shelves. This appearance of abundance disguises the troubling reality that lush displays are purchased at the cost of workers’ insecurity. If employers were forced to raise pay and improve conditions, they would have to rethink a business model that justifies food waste. I haven’t worked in a store for years. But every time I shop for groceries, I can’t help but think of the workers who seasoned, cooked, and stocked a supermarket delicacy knowing full well that it might end up in the trash.
