Mitigating barriers to surplus food donation in Italian retail and food service

The chapter discusses a policy adopted in Milan to enhance food recovery and redistribution from retailers and canteens. Retail and food service operators of higher income countries are in a favourable position to engage intensively with corporate donations, but they experience a few operational and managerial barriers. A literature review and semi-structured interviews with actors involved in FR&R highlight the problems related to the short residual shelf life of products, mismatches between recovery activities and existing processes, high recovery costs, the lack of knowledge about regulations, the risk of food mismanagement, and the variability of surplus food demand. To overcome these barriers, a partnership that gathers the Milan municipality, business players, non-profit food aid organisations, and a research advisory partner has conceived the so-called Neighbourhood Hubs Against Food Waste policy. The partnership designs and manages a hub where surplus food donations from local retailers and food service operators are collected and distributed to a network of neighbourhood beneficiaries. Also, based on the 2019-2020 pilot hub, the chapter identifies the organisational characteristics and operational processes of the collaborative network that smooth the barriers to donation.