What Does Jersey Mike's Do With Unsold Food?

You probably aren't surprised to hear that food waste is still a huge problem in the U.S., but how much of the unsold food at Jersey Mike's contributes to that? The American restaurant industry alone generates an average of 11 million tons of food waste each year (that's over 22 billion pounds). Of all unused food at restaurants, around 85% is wasted. As far as Jersey Mike's and its popular subs go, it appears some locations make an effort to use older food, but like the rest of the industry, a lot gets thrown away.

An important note here is that there is really no definitive answer to how Jersey Mike's treats unsold food, because like many fast-food chains, it is heavily franchised. This means how unsold food is treated may vary by location and is more up to the franchisee than the parent company. And most of those franchisees are not specifying what they do with unsold food.

Most of the info we have about Jersey Mike's unsold food comes from current and former employees on Reddit, and their own experiences show policies are not universal. On a thread talking about bread, one commenter says, "Dozens of loaves of bread go right in the dumpster along with everything that could be recyclable." Yet a different employee notes of their store, "Any bread at our store left at the end of the day becomes hot bread for the next day until 2pm. Whatever few loaves we have are almost always gone by [the] time 2pm rolls around."

Others tell a similar tale of varying treatment of unsold food. In that same discussion, another employee says their store used to donate unsold food to homeless shelters, but recently discontinued the policy. One more adds that at their store, "anything else goes to the help house like leftover meat ends get weighed out and donated." Some employees also note that they produce very little waste each day, with one saying, "if you follow the production report you'll end up pretty close to what you actually need/use." That caution is not universal. On another Reddit thread about unsold food and bread at Jersey Mike's, one employee claims they would give out free bread at the end of the shift, explaining, "It's going to be in the trash in about 30 minutes anyway. My manager and AM insist on making too much every damn day."

Jersey Mike's itself heavily supports the charity Feeding America, claiming it has donated $11 million, which has provided over 110 million meals through food bank partnerships. However, this is purely a monetary donation, and no food waste policy or standards are listed on the company's website. Unfortunately, this is the case for many chain restaurants and leftovers, but not all. Several major fast-food chains, including Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, and Cava, have voluntarily joined the U.S. Food Waste Pact, which aims to cut down food waste across the supply chain. It's understandable that a franchised-based company may have a hard time enforcing a standard around unsold food, but if Chick-fil-A can do it, others can too.