The Cold Chain: Keeping Good Food from Going to Waste

In June 2025, a truck pulled into Second Harvest of the Big Bend Foodbank in Lake City, Florida. Inside? Over 13,000 lbs of frozen baked goods, including croissants, cinnamon rolls, and chocolate chip cookies – items rarely seen on food bank shelves. 

Just days before, these products were sitting in a warehouse, at risk of being thrown away. Thanks to a partnership between Aspire Bakeries, Move For Hunger, and our Charity Freight Network, that food found a new home – not in a landfill, but in the hands of families who needed it. 

This is just one example of how Move For Hunger is closing a major gap in the fight against hunger: the cold chain. Every day, nutritious, high-quality food is wasted, not because it’s unwanted, but because it can’t be safely stored or transported. 

Globally, around 2.5 billion tons of food go to waste every year, and the United States is the leading contributor, discarding nearly 60 million tons annually. That’s nearly half of all food produced in the U.S., with enough wasted each year to equal about 130 billion meals. On average, that’s hundreds of pounds of food tossed per person—food that could have helped feed families in need. 

Much of this loss can be attributed to cold storage. Perishable items such as dairy, produce, meat, and frozen baked goods require refrigeration from the moment they’re produced to the moment they’re distributed – a temperature-controlled journey known as the cold chain. 

At Move For Hunger, we’re working to change that. Through our Food Recovery Program, we’re safely and efficiently recovering more perishable food than ever—at scale.

What is the Cold Chain? 

The cold chain refers to the refrigerated supply chain that preserves perishable food from spoiling during storage and transportation. Maintaining the cold chain is essential for keeping food safe, especially for frozen or temperature-sensitive goods. 

Without abundant refrigeration capacity, many food banks are forced to turn away donations of perfectly good food. That’s where Move For Hunger steps in.

Closing the Cold Chain Gap

Move For Hunger is building a growing network of logistics providers, donors, and food banks to overcome cold storage barriers and safely move frozen and perishable food across the country.

Our Food Recovery Program provides: 

• Access to specialized cold transport and storage.
• Collaborations with companies for ongoing donations, most recently, Aspire Bakeries.
• A growing network to support large-scale bulk recovery efforts.  

In the past two months alone, we’ve rescued more than 30,000 lbs of frozen food that otherwise would have gone to waste – thanks to our cold storage and transport capabilities. Many of these items are rarely seen at food banks, not because they aren’t needed, but because they’re hard to source and store. Recent recoveries have included sourdough bread, Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, frozen croissants, cinnamon rolls, Telera slider tolls, and ciabatta loaves. While many might consider these pantry staples, for families facing food insecurity, they can feel like a luxury. 

Through a recent collaboration with Aspire Bakeries, we’ve been able to coordinate large-scale frozen food donations to food banks nationwide. In just a few weeks, this collaboration delivered thousands of cases of baked goods to communities in Florida, New Jersey, California, and Texas – 13,000 lbs of chocolate chip pizza cookies and croissants for the Second Harvest Food Bank, to thousands of slider rolls and ciabatta loaves for the Tarrant Area Food Bank. With Aspire’s support and the help of our cold chain partners, we’re ensuring that high-quality, in demand food makes it from warehouses to tables instead of going to waste. 

Cold Chain Meets Bulk Recovery

Our cold storage efforts are part of a broader initiative to expand bulk recovery—moving large quantities of food from corporate donors and manufacturers to food banks. The ability to handle frozen and perishable goods opens the door to a broader variety of donations, allowing us to serve more communities with items that offer comfort, convenience, and much-needed variety.

How You Can Help

Are you a business with frozen or perishable food to donate? Want to help expand our cold chain network? By partnering with Move For Hunger, you’ll help support our Food Recovery program, making it possible to rescue more food and deliver more meals to those who need them most. 

Want other ways to get involved? Here’s how you can take action today.