Here's What McDonald's Does With Its Leftover Food
When you're exploring your favorite McDonald's hacks and toying with the app to figure out how to save the most cash, you probably aren't thinking hard about food waste. As long as your french fries and chicken nuggets (which were not invented by McD's, by the way) are fresh, does it really matter what the restaurant is doing with its excess food? Actually ... yeah, it does. As a global consumer, you should care about the fact that 133 billion pounds and $161 billion (in 2010 dollars, as per the USDA) are lost in food waste every year. It's an ethical, environmental, and economic problem that we all eventually pay for, in a roundabout way.
McDonald's claims, on its website, that it "keeps a close eye" on what foods need to be prepared at what times of day as per traffic patterns, all the better to minimize waste before it's created. The company alleges that less than one percent of food is wasted. McDonald's admits that it doesn't donate leftovers as that would violate its food safety rules but states that cooked food that isn't consumed is at least composted.
The company's procedures are in lockstep with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) hierarchy for dealing with retail food waste, which prioritizes prevention. Although this may vary by location, it also seems that McDonald's occasionally donates unused ingredients — which haven't been cooked — to partner organizations in local communities. This all sounds benign, if not even a little virtuous, but the reality may be quite different, if difficult to prove.
Some claim that McDonald's is McWasting a ton of food, but is it true?
Some allege that, given the five minutes that McDonald's officially claims to hold its fries, there is no way for the Golden Arches to avoid tremendous amounts of wasted product, especially if employees are trying to stay ahead of mealtime rushes. Whether or not this is true is hard to prove — and is oftentimes based on speculation or rumor, not verified fact.
Meanwhile, some self-proclaimed McDonald's employees writing on Reddit claim to have witnessed food waste at their franchise locations. "It depends who is back there and what their mood is at the time at my store," one alleged employee stated when discussing product holding times. "For example, next week we have corporate at our store for 3 days, so either we will have to drop less product or we will end up throwing away more food."
On another thread, a manager's cavalier attitude towards condiments incensed one Redditor: "I'm told by my closing manager that we have to start wasting the table product – lettuce, onions, pickles, etc. – by the end of the night according to our supervisor. regardless of if it's still capable of being saved with saran wrap for the lunch shift tomorrow." Elsewhere, employees at certain stores claimed they could get in trouble for eating expired food themselves, even if the alternative was the trash can. Still, remember that all this is speculative and that many decisions may come via individual franchisees, not necessarily corporate.