Sending to CEO

As food wastage and scarcity is an ongoing problem, many restaurants, like Dunkin’, are to blame for this issue because of the amount of food that is tossed by them in a day. The company has made it mandatory for all employees that work the night shift to throw away all food, coffee, tea and etc. before they close for the night. To combat this food waste issue we have decided to come up with a waste Donation plan and will send our idea to CEO David Hoffman.

Dear David Hoffman,
Your company is known as the world’s leading baked goods and coffee chain that serves over 3 million customers per day but why not go beyond serving those 3 million individuals and increase the number of people “served” by allowing all the food that will be tossed at the end of the day to be donated to local homeless shelters. The food tossed every day is excessive throughout the nation and there are people who go to bed hungry every night that could benefit from even one donut. The company states, “That it is left to the discretion of the individual owner/franchisee of each restaurant whether or not food is donated at the end of the day.” Unfortunately, in many cases, the decision is to toss all of the food. This was seen in a viral TikTok video that had an employee named Bryan Johnston show how much food was wasted at the end of his shift. Later on, that same employee decided to take the advice of his viewers and went out of his way to donate the food to the homeless which ended up with him losing his job after the company came across the video and wasn’t pleased with the negative brand image it gave Dunkin’.

One would think that this act of kindness would be rewarded but instead, it was punished. Food Waste Reduction Alliance revealed that only 1.4% of food waste is donated and 84.3% is discarded. Instead of adding to this statistic, Dunkin can help combat this issue by having a program that enforces the donation of food to homeless shelters. To ensure the safety of the Dunkin manager and employee, they wouldn’t have to personally take the food to the shelters, a shelter would have the opportunity to come into the store and pick up all of the leftover food. To reduce any liability or health issues, the time that was originally taken at night to toss the food can be used to quality check all of the items that are to be donated to make sure that nothing is expired. Once that is finished, it can be put into bags that will be picked up by the shelter.

Food insecurity is an ongoing issue in the U.S, so does America really run on Dunkin’ if the company isn’t doing its part in combating this nationwide issue? Implementing this program comes at little to no cost to your company since all of the food that would be donated was being thrown away, to begin with.

We look forward to hearing back from you.

Eduardo Garcia
Hani Patel
Jasmine Chatha
Kresimir Majdandzic
Maria Mendoza