Trader Joe’s Donated – Instead of Wasting – 35,000 Pounds of Food When Coolers Malfunctioned

January 10, 2018December 10, 2018Food Freedom

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A Trader Joe’s had ample opportunity to chuck their perishable goods into the dump after refrigerators unexpectedly malfunctioned. Many grocery stores presumably do this. Instead, the chain blessed those in need and proved that practices that support food waste need to go!

Interestingly, this act of donation appears to be a policy for the large national chain that offers somewhat healthier and affordable foods.

SEE: Affordable Grocery Store ALDI Goes Organic And Bans Toxic Chemicals From Their Products

GNN reports:

The Trader Joe’s of Kalamazoo, Michigan experienced some technical difficulties in their cooling system on Wednesday. Most businesses in the food industry – if faced with the same dilemma – would simply call a mechanic and attempt to save the food before it all goes bad and ends up in the garbage.

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Trader Joe’s policy, however, requires their stores to donate all of their perishables to charity. The groceries from last week’s malfunction were donated to Kalamazoo Gospel Mission: a local shelter that serves over 600 meals to the city’s homeless every day.

Though 95% of their food is donated, the ministry says that the Trader Joe’s donation is the single largest contribution that they have ever received.

SEE: New German Supermarket Lidl Set To Compete With Aldi

When the incident happened, the store called the mission and the charity assembled a team and mobilized pick up within the hour.

Greg Weaver, Director of Food Service at the mission, said:

They just really exemplified a culture of generosity and we’re just so thankful for them.

Sad as it is to even report on a story like this, we wanted to highlight it to inspire other companies to follow suit since city code enforcers in the U.S. are going crazy by stopping people from feeding the hungry, and are trashing perfectly good food. We need to stop the scarcity insanity and support generosity in 2018.

Perhaps the Trader Joe’s act of generosity is born out of its generosity to its well-paid employees. Seriously, have you ever seen an unhappy or unhelpful employee there?

This investment in their employees was featured in this little-known TEDx talk called “The Good Jobs Strategy” – for a good reason!