Fighting Food Waste at Luke's: One Purchase at a Time
Let's be real about something—grocery stores waste a lot of food. The average supermarket throws away 10% of their inventory. That's not just bad business, it's terrible for our planet. But here at Luke's? We're doing things differently.
My name is Olivia and I’m your associate grocery buyer. I'm the one making sure those essential grocery products you love actually make it to our shelves. Well everything but produce, alcohol, dairy, and butcher/deli items. I also supervise our grocery clerks, serve as the point of contact for all our vendors at my location, and occasionally get to attend industry events like food fairs when they come to San Francisco. I want to tell you why I genuinely love this job, even on days when I'm drowning in spreadsheets and vendor calls.
My Luke's Journey
I started here as a part-time clerk while finishing my degree—broke, exhausted, and running on fumes between classes and shifts. The first thing I noticed was the friendly culture, the next was the free food. As a very broke college student, having my daily staff meal and access to staff items (more on this later) made a deep impact on me. I was working tirelessly, having either class, work, or both every day of the week.
When my manager noticed I was burning out, they didn't just ignore it or replace me. They sat me down, gave me a raise with plenty of positive feedback, and adjusted my hours to protect my sanity. That's when I knew Luke’s actually cared about the humans behind the name tags.
Shortly after I graduated, they took a chance on 22-year-old me for this buyer position despite my lack of management experience. My boss Jason saw my potential and decided to give me a chance. Why? Because they saw value where other companies might have demanded years of experience I couldn't possibly have yet.
My Connection to Sustainability
Environmental stewardship has been one of my core values since 7th grade when I organized a school fundraiser to adopt a polar bear (not to brag, but we raised enough to adopt two polar bears). Later, I even spent a whole semester of my junior year in high school studying environmental stewardship in rural Wisconsin. Today, stewardship is so deeply ingrained that I carry the spirit of it through everything I do—it's an intrinsic part of my life.
When I stepped into this role at Luke's, I made it my personal mission to discover what we were doing to curb food waste—or "shrinkage" if you want to sound like an industry pro. After all, I was bringing in a lot of the product that could one day become waste. As you can imagine, some food waste is a necessary evil of running a grocery store. But I wanted to know exactly how Luke's was handling it.
Fast forward to when I heard we would be featuring sustainability in April—I pitched my idea for a newsletter focused on food waste, and in typical Luke's Local fashion, they gave me a shot. What I discovered made me even prouder to work here.
The Cold, Hard Facts
Food waste makes up 24% of solid waste in U.S. landfills, pumping excess greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and accelerating climate change. With all our perishable products, some waste is inevitable—but we've managed to keep our waste metric at just 3% compared to the industry's 10%.
That's more than three times better than average. And it's not an accident.
How We're Beating The Odds
Our Secret Weapon: The Fox Den: Unlike most grocery chains, we have our own commissary kitchen right here in San Francisco. This allows us to hybridize our grocery and kitchen operations according to our goals. Many of the wasted products in a store can still have life beyond the shelf. That day-old bread that didn't sell? Chef Nicolette and her team at the Fox Den makes them tomorrow's house-made croutons. That's not just reducing waste—it's creating something new and delicious from what would've been trash.
Staff Items (I told you we would get back to it!): Those slightly bruised apples or dented cans? They go home with us instead of to the landfill. I can't tell you how much this meant to me as a struggling student. We get to enjoy perfectly good food while helping the planet.
Thoughtful Store Design: Our stores average 3,500 square feet versus the industry's massive 38,000. It takes standard grocers 10 times the space to generate only twice the inventory turnover—plus more labor and operating costs. Our smaller footprint keeps products abundant, fresher and with less waste.
Careful, Tailored Ordering (this is what I do!): Rather than blindly ordering to excess, our buying team tracks sales meticulously at each location. North Beach wants different things than Cole Valley, and we order accordingly. Each store has a dedicated buying team. These store dedicated buyers are able to carefully track sales and use their knowledge of the customer base and surrounding area to order more of what sells and less of what doesn't. This neighborhood-specific approach means we stock what actually sells where you shop… resulting in as little waste as possible.
Too Good To Go: We partner with this program to sell expired or slightly damaged but still perfectly good food at lower costs. Your wallet wins, the planet wins.
Day-Olds: Those delicious baked goods from yesterday? Still amazing today, just at a discount. Why waste something that's still perfectly enjoyable?
Making A Difference, Little By Little
This commitment to sustainability and living our values every day isn't just company policy—it's what makes those stressful days worthwhile for me personally. Every order I place is another opportunity to balance what you want with what's good for our shared planet.
So next time you shop at Luke's, know that your local option is making a real difference. We're not perfect, but we're genuinely trying to do better by our community and our world. I'm not being coy—I love my job and I love telling my friends and family about Luke's: "Oh you need a job? You should apply to Luke's," "If you want a local option we have it at Luke's," "Isn't it delicious? I got it at Luke's, the vendor actually makes it here in the city."
Now how's that for food waste mitigation? Pretty good if you ask me. As I mentioned above, through my position I get to make choices every day to help decrease the amount of waste my location produces each week. This has deepened my appreciation for Luke’s and helps make some of those stressful days feel infinitely more worthwhile. I hope you leave this newsletter feeling even a little more confident shopping at Luke’s Local, knowing how hard we work to make your experience as food waste–free as possible. Little by little, you and the team here at Luke’s Local are making a real difference—and honestly, that’s something worth supporting.
—Olivia
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