The restaurant industry faces a unique set of challenges. Consumers and investors are prioritizing sustainability, margins are razor-thin and operational complexity persists. Food waste intersects with all these issues, representing a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. While many companies have made public commitments, barriers to reduce food waste remain: siloed data, unclear ownership and the difficulty of prioritizing actions that deliver both financial and environmental returns.

ReFED's Business Services program helps food companies close these gaps to implement and advance waste reduction strategies with measurable business impact. Since launching the landmark 2016 Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste, ReFED has established itself as the definitive source for food waste data, providing the most comprehensive analysis of the food waste problem and solutions to address it.

ReFED's Business Services team is the operational engine for the U.S. Food Waste Pact, a voluntary agreement led by ReFED and WWF that works with national brands such as Walmart, Hilton and Chick-fil-A Inc. Through the pact, signatories collaborate pre-competitively and share business-level food waste data that ReFED collects, validates and analyzes. Working directly with companies through pact data collection surfaces industry trends that inform comprehensive food waste strategies. Business Services extend this expertise to food companies beyond the pact through three integrated approaches:

• Strategic Advisory delivers targeted engagements including cross-functional workshops and implementation roadmaps.
• Custom Analytics provides data collection, benchmarking and solution prioritization.
• Capacity Building offers executive education and scalable resources tailored to specific industry challenges.

Business Services projects bring sustainability leads together with supply chain, operations, finance, revenue management, IT and merchandising. The Business Services team pairs deep fluency in data and measurement with strategic advisory that aligns cross-functional stakeholders, translates technical findings into clear priorities and tradeoffs and drives accountable next steps for solution adoption.

Spotlight on Chick-fil-A

Chick-fil-A's partnership with ReFED demonstrates how strategic advisory creates competitive advantages. The first restaurant company to join the U.S. Food Waste Pact in April 2024, the company has exceeded its goal to divert 25 million pounds of food waste from landfills, ultimately reaching 61.6 million pounds by 2025.

In September 2025, Chick-fil-A announced it had provided 200 million meals to communities since 2020, backed by $22.8 million in food bank investments. More than 2,500 locally owned and operated restaurants participate in Chick-fil-A Shared Table, creating 42 million meals through partnerships with local nonprofits since the program's start more than a decade ago.

ReFED's Business Services team hosted cross-functional workshops that enabled coordination between teams to advance multiple parallel initiatives, helping Chick-fil-A accelerate its existing sustainability efforts. The collaboration's impact extends beyond operational improvements.

As Dawn Rhodes, a member of Chick-fil-A's sustainability team who participated in the ReFED workshops, explained: "Chick-fil-A is committed to accelerating food waste reduction and working with the ReFED team has been instrumental in expanding our efforts. The data and insights that ReFED has provided our team has allowed us to better understand opportunities to increase collective impact through food donation, composting and other food waste reduction efforts."

What ReFED's Business Services can do for you

For brands looking to replicate this success, the playbook is clear. Achieving scale requires moving from internal guesswork to evidence-based strategy. This means:

• Baseline with Granular Data: Understanding the "what," "where" and "why" of waste streams with analytics tailored to the restaurant sector.
• Build Cross-Functional Buy-in: Facilitating alignment between sustainability, operations and finance teams to create shared ownership and accountability.
• Prioritize for Maximum Impact: Identifying which solutions offer the best return on investment, both financial and environmental.

Is your company ready to move from pledge to progress? Learn how ReFED's Business Services can provide your team with a clear path forward. Connect with our experts by filling out this form on the ReFED website.