73.9 million tons of surplus food generated in the United States annually, and yet 85% is lost to landfills and incinerators, according to the 2025 Flashfood Impact Report. In the grocery sector, North American retailers lose an estimated $35 billion of edible food each year — often consisting of highly perishable, high-margin categories like fresh produce, meat, and dairy. For an independent grocer operating on razor-thin margins of about 2% on a good day, this waste translates into more than $40,000 in lost revenue per store annually.
But IGA retailers are proving that food waste does not have to be an accepted cost of doing business. By teaming up with IGA Red Oval Partner Flashfood, grocers are transforming surplus inventory into margin recovery, customer loyalty, and local community impact.
Using the Flashfood app, shoppers can discover a wide range of grocery items at a markdown price due to their near expiration date. These items would have normally been discarded during the grocers' culling process.
To understand how this works in practice, we looked at the firsthand experiences of two distinct IGA operators: Jason Scholtka, store manager of Young’s Payless IGA in Copperopolis, California, and Nisha Patel, owner-operator of Mt. Plymouth IGA in Sorrento, Florida. Their insights show that Flashfood offers a practical, profitable solution to retail waste.
The key to a successful Flashfood program is embedding it directly into existing daily routines. Mt. Plymouth IGA has been partnering with Flashfood since November 2021. For Patel, implementing the platform was an immediate "no-brainer" to solve a persistent operational challenge.
"It was a ‘Win Win’ to help our shrink and to give our customers the option to buy items at 50% off,” she said.
To make execution seamless for her lean single-store team, Patel built Flashfood directly into daily department checkouts.
"We trained our department head to simply go through their daily check and pull anything that was close to date," Patel said, detailing their specific operational windows. "Deli, meat 1-2 days. Bakery 1 day. Dairy 4-5 days. Grocery 7-10 days."
At Young's Payless IGA, Scholtka's team made the integration seamless. Using the produce department as an example, a staff member will bring a box with them during the culling process and set any produce that would normally be discarded (but still edible) into the box. The dedicated staff member would then use the Flashfood app to list all the items at a markdown.
For both stores, the crown jewel of the morning sweep is the $5, 5-pound produce box. By packing surplus fruits and vegetables into a convenient box, associates quickly clear out highly perishable items while offering value to shoppers.
"People love cheap, good produce. We never put anything that was rotten; instead, it's ready to use right away," Patel said.
This smart bundling has even connected Mt. Plymouth IGA to local hobby farms.
"Many farms who have animals to feed love the produce boxes and so many horses, pigs, sheep, bunnies, and tortoise, to mention a few, are very happy campers," Patel noted.
In Copperopolis, Scholtka’s experience mirrors this community connection.
"Our produce boxes by far are our most popular things," he said. "Our produce boxes do well for a lot of ranches out here."
Patel highlights that the platform is exceptionally good at moving specialty deli items and dairy products. While Mt. Plymouth IGA rarely needs to discount their fresh cut meats, Patel notes that, "items like specialty cheeses, yogurts – we do see many Flashfood customers taking advantage of purchases."
Flipping surplus food on the app allows retailers to recover costs on items that otherwise would be thrown away. Rather than absorbing a 100% loss, grocers get an opportunity to secure a final sale on short-dated goods.
For Young's Payless IGA, Flashfood serves a critical dual purpose by helping the store comply with California’s state-mandated organic waste laws.
"In California, we have something called SB 1383. It's a food waste recovery bill where we have to go into a contract with either a food bank or do what we can to try to keep food out of the trash can," Scholtka explains. "Doing Flashfood now makes us compliant with it."
As of 2026, 12 states have enacted food-waste separation mandates, and that number is likely to grow in the future.
With the average shopper's growing concerns of grocery inflation, budget-stretching tools have transitioned from a "nice-to-have" to a necessity for North American families. An October 2025 study by Deloitte showed that 89% of North American consumers plan to buy discount goods by seeking out deals to curb inflation. This financial pressure peaked in November 2025 when the temporary withholding of SNAP EBT funding acted as a catalyst, triggering an immediate 8x spike in downloads of the app nationwide.
Scholtka witnessed this surge in demand firsthand in his rural California community.
"The timing of when Flashfood came in was perfect because that was right around the fall [2025] season when they were telling people that EBT wasn't going to have money for Thanksgiving," Scholtka recalls. "You had a lot of families that weren't knowing if they were going to get their federal dollars. So, the timing was perfect for Flashfood."
When analyzing who is using the app, Patel has identified two core, highly loyal shopper demographics in her Florida market.
"There are two different types of Flashfood customers," Patel observes. "One is a price-conscious customer who likes to see deals and stretch their dollars. The others like to save the planet and are concerned about filling our landfills with food that could have been used and eaten before it’s expiry date."
Some grocers may worry that app users will only buy discounted items and leave. However, Flashfood data shows that shoppers who come in to pick up their orders spend an average of $28 on other items to complete their meals during that same visit.
Both IGA retailers have observed this in-store behavior.
"It's a little mix of both, but I feel like most of the customers that are coming in here are completing baskets," Scholtka said. "If you're already here, why would you want to turn around and drive 1-2 miles another way?"
"With deal seekers, many do their purchases on the app and come into pick up the remaining items and then ask for their Flashfood order when they are checking out," Patel said.
To reduce labor costs and minimize the operational time spent posting items, Flashfood officially launched its dedicated Flashfood For Partners app in May 2026. Developed in close collaboration with on-the-ground retail associates, the app features:
Patel notes that the new technology has significantly streamlined her team's daily culling workflow.
"This has definitely helped," she said. "It posts the description, size, the picture of the product, and the original price we were selling it for."
By turning everyday grocery culling into a strategic marketing tool, IGA grocers are proving that sustainability and profitability can work together. Whether operating a multi-store California business or a single-store Florida neighborhood market, independent retailers have a powerful, scalable tool to protect their margins, feed their communities, and build lasting shopper loyalty.
Young's Payless IGA experienced a fast and painless onboarding process to launch Flashfood. Like Patel, Scholtka credits his team's ownership of the program for its rapid success.
"We sat down with the Flashfood rep in September and by October we were fully rocking," Scholtka recalls.
Ready to turn shrink into opportunity at your store?
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