While I can't speak to all grocery stores in all locations, there are food recovery networks that operate at scale. The pantries I work with collect and redist

While I can't speak to all grocery stores in all locations, there are food recovery networks that operate at scale. The pantries I work with collect and redistribute food from something like 30 different local businesses and organizations, including local supermarkets (mostly "day-old" bread and pastries), cafeterias (surplus prepared food), and farmers (surplus produce). We also benefit from middle-man organizations that collect at a larger scale and redistribute to smaller pantries like us -- large donations of canned and other packaged food, gleaned fruits and vegetables which are perfectly fine but didn't make the market cut (ie, ugly tomatoes), and the like.