Meal Matchup — Plain-English guides to surplus food donation and food rescue

Plain-English guides to surplus food donation and food rescue

Surplus Food Donation Readiness Check

Answer eight yes/no questions about your kitchen, cafeteria, or event operation. Your score shows how close you are to being ready to approach a food bank or food rescue organization about donating surplus food — and which practical gaps to close first.

This is a general self-assessment of operational readiness, not legal, regulatory, or food-safety guidance. Requirements for donating food — especially prepared food — vary by state and locality. Talk to your local health department and, for liability questions, your organization's counsel before starting a donation program.

Meal Matchup is a small reference site about one practical question: what happens to good food that doesn't get eaten, and how does it get to someone who will eat it?

A lot of food is prepared, stocked, or grown and never consumed — in dining halls, restaurants, grocery stores, event venues, and home kitchens. Most of it could be prevented or redirected. The pages here explain, in plain terms, how the pieces of that system fit together: what the EPA Wasted Food Scale means, how food rescue logistics actually work, what the federal Good Samaritan donation law says, how campus dining programs run recovery operations, and how to waste less at home in the first place.

If you run a kitchen, cafeteria, or event operation and are thinking about donating surplus food, start with the Donation Readiness Check on this page. It walks through the practical pieces — a partner organization, containers, cold storage, a point person, a conversation with your local health department — and tells you which gaps to close before you reach out to a food bank or rescue group.

Nothing here is legal or professional advice. Where a decision has legal or regulatory weight, we link to the primary source and tell you which professional or agency to ask.