Toward the end of 2025, Spoonfuls, New England’s largest food recovery organization, recovered 182,000 pounds in one week. This, Spoonfuls says, is the largest single week of recovery in the history of the organization. Spoonfuls says this single-week record provided food for partner organizations to create 145,000 meals and kept more than $358,000 of food out of landfills.
Erin Ash, senior director of programs with Spoonfuls, says this record week was possible due to new collection stops on every route, which meant more food being collected and hauled, which in turn benefits more food pantries.
Ash, too, says Spoonfuls has also worked with the retailers to help better identify produce that the organization would accept to help divert more food waste in the future.
“We have a good team that is committed to that, both the folks on the ground that are at the stores every day or every week that are asking questions, are looking in compost bins and are saying, ‘Hey, there’s a bunch of really good produce in these compost bins. Next time donate these to Spoonfuls, and we will take these items,’” Ash says.
The Spoonfuls team also connects with store managers and corporate contacts, Ash adds, to better optimize performance at each individual store.
She says another key to Spoonfuls’ growth was through partnerships with university cafeterias, with Gillette Stadium and expanding pickups at wholesalers.
“We had been mostly grocery stores and farms with a little bit of wholesale,” Ash says. “This time, we amped up that wholesale stadium, large-scale or as we’ll often call it, institutional food recovery.”
How Route Flexibility Absorbs Wholesale Volume
And Ash says Spoonfuls also had capabilities to add capacity on routes, which allowed for additional pickups not previously scheduled, and that helped fill up weeks and routes.
“In Worcester, we received a lot of calls from two different grocery stores that had worked with us a little bit in the past really liked us, but they had partnerships with other organizations, and sometimes, when those other partners canceled, or those other partners couldn’t handle the volume of food, or they mistake orders coming in and they were receiving additional pallets of product that they didn’t need, they called us, and we jumped on those opportunities,” she says.
Ash estimates the second part of the year, those types of inquires happened more than once a week, and she says those pickups, too, help add additional pounds recovered. Ash also says in November and December, Spoonfuls received additional donations from businesses or organizations that wanted to get involved when the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s (SNAP) fate was uncertain.
“Especially as a result of SNAP, we recovered just in Greater Boston, an additional 30,000 pounds of food that were not part of the initial schedule,” she says.
Ash also says another organization donated 10,000 pounds of food during that time, too.
As for the record week? Ash says typically the week after Thanksgiving is a big week for food recovery. And, she says Spoonfuls started working with some new Trader Joe’s stores that opened up in the area around that time and just about every route added at least one new food donor, and all of that adds up to the most food recovered in one week.
Driving Per-Store Performance Through Education
Ash notes Spoonfuls’ 2025 goal was to recover 5.8 million pounds of food, which Spoonfuls exceeded, recovering 6.2 million pounds last year. As for this year? Spoonfuls has lofty goals of recovering more than 7 million pounds of food in 2026. Ash says the organization plans to expand into Plymouth County this fall, which will also help the organization meet this goal.
With the additional food donors on routes, she sees some route efficiencies that can not only help Spoonfuls recover more but also support more recipients of the food Spoonfuls recovers.
“We’re really focusing on doing more with what we have, with our existing fleet, with our existing staff and how can we run efficient routes where we’re able to recover as much as possible and deliver food to as many people as possible,” she says.
And, she says another important component of continual growth for Spoonfuls is to increase performance at stores, Ash says, through education and buy-in from leadership.
“We had some stores last year that were donating 200 pounds, and are now regularly donating over 1,000,” she says. “We’ve had big increases where we’ve really gotten buy-in from different department heads, or we’ve done a lot of additional education with them around, what Spoonfuls can take and why this matters, and why this is helpful.”
