In this article
Every restaurant knows the moment after service: the mise en place that never got used, the portion that was correctly prepped but never picked up, the batch that's coming off the menu tomorrow. Still perfectly edible, still completely safe — and headed for the bin unless you do something else with that kilo.
That "something else" has three shapes, and they're rarely put side by side. You can bin it, like most venues do today. You can donate it to a food bank or charity. Or you can sell it at a reduced price through a surplus app like Too Good To Go. All three cost time. Two of the three also either bring in money or avoid a cost you're already paying.
The problem is nobody has ever put those three routes next to each other with real numbers. "Donating is good for the environment" is true, but it doesn't answer the question an owner is actually asking at 11pm: does this cost me time I don't have, or does it end up paying for itself? This article puts all three routes through the same arithmetic — the same kilos, the same labour time — so the answer isn't "it feels right", it's a figure.
Two things make that arithmetic harder than it looks. The first is legal: who's liable if a donated meal makes someone ill, and does that differ by country? The second is fiscal: do you pay VAT on food you give away for free? The honest answer to both is "it depends on where your restaurant is" — and this article explains exactly what it depends on, rather than inventing one rule that happens to apply everywhere.
At the bottom sits a calculator that runs on your own numbers: your weekly surplus, your own disposal fee, your own labour cost, your own surplus-app assumptions. It runs the three routes against each other live — and the answer that comes out is less obvious than most small kitchens would guess.
Why this is its own question now
The food-waste article on this site covers the operational side: portion control, FIFO, prep discipline — how you avoid a surplus forming in the first place. The biowaste article covers the disposal side: how you sort what's genuinely spoiled. Between those two sits a third category neither one answers — food that isn't spoiled, that couldn't have been avoided, and simply didn't sell.
That surplus disappears into the bin in most kitchens today because it's the path of least resistance: no form, no phone call, no extra step after a service that already ran long. That's a genuine obstacle, not laziness — and this article takes it seriously instead of waving it away (see number 6).
The reason it deserves its own article now is that all three routes have their own, well-documented regulation and economics — an EU liability guideline, VAT treatment that genuinely varies by member state, and a platform economy with its own business model. That deserves more than the single sentence it currently gets in two other articles.
Finance guide Every finance number for your venue in one place From food cost to VAT rate — the complete guide to restaurant finance. Read the guideThe 7 numbers
Seven numbers, in the order you meet them as you move from "we bin it" to "we do something with it": first what you already know, then the law, then the tax office, then what you still have to log, then the two routes themselves, then the real cost, and finally the point where one starts beating the other.
1. The number you already have
Before you touch donation or resale, you already have the one number that actually matters: how much do you bin right now? The food-waste article on this site already works that number out — the average independent restaurant wastes between 4 and 10% of what it buys in, and part of that isn't spoiled product at all, just unsold surplus that was still perfectly good.
That figure isn't recalculated here — it's the starting point. What this article adds isn't "how much do you waste", it's "what is that surplus worth if you don't bin it". That's a different question, and the rest of this article answers it with three routes and one calculator.
2. The legal floor: who's liable if you donate?
In 2017 the European Commission published the EU Food Donation Guidelines (Notice 2017/C 361/01, updated in 2020/C 199/01). The starting point is simple: the food-safety responsibility set out in Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 applies to donated food exactly as it applies to food you sell. Donating isn't a back door to lower standards.
Where it gets more complicated — and where this article won't tell you something that isn't true — is liability. Exactly who's responsible if something goes wrong is, under those same Commission guidelines, a matter of national competence, not EU-harmonised. There is no single European "Good Samaritan" law that gives every donor the same level of protection everywhere.
What is confirmed: Italy was the first EU country with a dedicated donor-protection statute — the "Legge del Buon Samaritano" (Law 155/2003), later strengthened by the Legge Gadda (Law 166/2016), which cut the administrative burden on donors further. France followed with the Loi Garot (2016), which even requires larger businesses to donate unsold food rather than bin it. Other member states — including Belgium and the Netherlands — have no dedicated donation statute; there, you fall back on general food-safety law, which doesn't necessarily offer the same level of protection. The graphic further down puts six countries side by side, dated when it was checked — verify this with your own food-safety authority or a lawyer when in doubt, exactly the way the biowaste article recommends for sorting rules.
The EU Guidelines apply everywhere; a dedicated donor-protection law doesn't. Checked August 2026 — verify your own country when in doubt.
"General food law only" doesn't mean "no protection" — it means no law exists that was written specifically for donation situations. This overview isn't legal advice; the position can change by country.
3. The tax number: do you pay VAT on what you give away?
This is the question most owners skip, and it's exactly the one that can flip the answer. Giving food away for free is, under most EU VAT systems, in principle a "deemed supply" — a transaction on which VAT is technically due, as though you'd sold it at the normal price.
The EU VAT Committee has agreed that member states may value that deemed supply at the product's adjusted condition at the point of donation — not the original purchase price. For food close to its expiry date, that adjusted value can in principle be very low or nil. Germany applies this directly: the taxable basis for donated groceries is reduced for products close to their best-before date or that can no longer be sold, which makes it effectively close to VAT-free.
Whether your country applies it the same way is exactly what this article won't paper over: some member states follow that reasoning generously, others still hold to the original purchase price as the basis, which makes donating fiscally more expensive than binning. Ask your accountant this explicitly before donating at scale — it's the one number in this article whose direction (a benefit or an extra cost) flips by country.
4. What you still have to log
"I'm just giving it away" isn't a licence to drop traceability. Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 — the same general food law that applies to what you sell — requires every food business to know where its product came from and, for non-prepacked items like restaurant surplus, to tell the recipient the storage time and conditions.
In practice that means: what it is (allergens included, especially once it leaves the restaurant), how it was stored, since when, and whether it can still be frozen. A food bank or charity is itself a food business and carries its own responsibility from that point on — but that hand-off only works if you pass along what they need to make a responsible decision themselves.
This is exactly the administrative step a well-meaning "we just hand it over" misses, and it's why number 6 below counts it as real labour time — not a formality thrown in for free.
5. The platform economics: selling versus donating
Alongside donating there's a second route: selling at a reduced price through a surplus app like Too Good To Go. The mechanic is the same everywhere — you list a "surprise bag" at a fraction of its normal value, a customer reserves and collects it, and the platform keeps a fixed commission per bag.
That's a fundamentally different economy from donating. Donating avoids a cost (the disposal fee you'd otherwise pay) and earns nothing beyond that, unless a tax benefit applies as described above. Selling through an app does bring in real revenue — smaller than the normal sale price, and with a commission taken off the top. The exact commission differs by platform and by market and gets revised regularly — check the current rate on your own agreement before you run the numbers.
The calculator further down puts both routes side by side with the same labour time built in, so you don't make the mistake most venues make: looking only at the revenue per bag and forgetting the time it takes to put one together.
Same volume, same labour time — three routes, three very different outcomes per kilo.
Marginal value per extra kilo, excluding the fixed part of the labour time (number 6). That's why donating looks small here — the fixed part only starts to matter above a certain volume (number 7).
6. The real cost: staff time
This is the number that explains why most venues never start, and no other article on food donation counts it. Sorting, weighing, logging (see number 4) and handing over surplus costs staff time — and that time splits into two parts that behave differently.
There's a fixed part per session: opening the log, filling in the traceability note, listing a bag — call it around 15 minutes, whatever the volume that evening. And there's a variable part per kilo: weighing and packing, roughly 0.8 minutes per kilo. At a labour cost of €16.80/hour and 18 kilos of surplus in an average week, that works out to about €8.23 of labour time — for both routes, since sorting and logging cost roughly the same time whether you're donating or selling.
Compare that with what you save by not binning: at a disposal fee of €0.35/kg, 18 kilos avoids about €6.30 in disposal cost. That's less than the €8.23 in labour — meaning at this volume, without a tax benefit, straight donation stays a small net cost. That's not a mistake in the maths; it's exactly the honest finding number 7 below explains.
7. The threshold
The fixed part of the labour time (that 15-minute session) spreads across more kilos as your volume grows — the variable part (0.8 minutes per kilo) doesn't. That means there's a volume at which the avoided disposal fee catches up with the fixed labour cost, and donating flips from a small net cost into a real saving.
At the figures above, that threshold lands at roughly 34 kilos a week — about 4.9 kilos a day. Below that volume you donate for reasons other than money: goodwill, a sustainability story, or simply because it's the right thing to do. Above it, donating pays for itself even with no tax benefit — and with one (number 3), that threshold moves lower still.
The route that already comes out ahead at almost any volume is the third one: selling through a surplus app. At the same 18 kilos a week, that route — after the same labour time and the platform's commission — already nets over €44 a week. That's exactly why most venues that start with surplus begin with an app, and only start donating alongside it once the volume is large enough.
Run the numbers for your own venue
Enter your own weekly surplus, your own disposal fee and labour cost, and your own surplus-app assumptions. The calculator runs the three routes against each other live — including the volume at which donating tips from a cost into a saving for your own venue.
The tax benefit defaults to €0. Only fill it in once your accountant has confirmed that donated food can be valued at a reduced basis in your country (number 3) — the calculator never invents that figure for you.
What's your surplus worth?
Three routes, the same kilos, the same labour time.
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A worked example based on your own inputs. This isn't accounting, tax or legal advice — the exact tax treatment and liability rules differ by country; confirm them with your own accountant or lawyer before relying on them.
Two things are deliberately left out of this calculator. Goodwill and the sustainability story with guests have no euro sign, but for many venues matter as much as the number itself. And the calculator runs on one fixed hourly wage — if surplus is handled outside normal service hours (say, by someone already closing up), the real marginal cost can be lower than what you enter here.
What the calculator does show is the whole point of this article: donating and selling aren't synonyms for "not binning it". They're two different decisions with two different economics, and which one pays off most for your venue depends on your volume — not on which option feels the most obvious.
How to start tomorrow
None of these steps needs an investment. What they need most is giving tonight's surplus a destination before it reaches the bin.
This week
- Weigh what's left over after every service that's still perfectly good — not spoiled, just unsold — for one week. That figure, not a guess, is your starting point for the calculator.
- Find the nearest food bank or charity in your area and ask about their own terms for collecting restaurant surplus — those differ a lot between organisations.
- Create an account on a surplus app and list one bag for an evening to see how the request-and-collection flow actually works.
This month
- Ask your accountant explicitly about the VAT treatment of donated food in your country (number 3) — it's the one number in this article that can flip the answer.
- Agree with the food bank or the platform who passes along which information (allergens, storage time, storage conditions), so number 4 stays a routine rather than a formality that gets skipped.
- Enter your own numbers into the calculator and work out whether you're above or below the threshold from number 7 — that decides which route you set up first.
Where this leaves you
A kilo of surplus is never just "waste" or just "a nice gesture" — it's one of three routes, each with its own legal framework, its own tax treatment and its own economics. Binning is the only one guaranteed to earn nothing.
Donating isn't automatically the cheapest option once you count labour time — but the volume at which it becomes one is a concrete, calculable number, not a feeling. Selling through an app brings in real money for most venues from a modest volume already, precisely because it stays a real sale rather than a gift.
The one thing this article can't give you is the exact liability and VAT rules for your own country — they differ enough to genuinely change the answer, which is why the same message appears three times: check before you rely on it. What it does give you is the arithmetic that makes the rest of the decision objective.