Big data analysis and predictive modeling tools are helping groceries decrease food waste. It also means less fresh produce is making it to food pantry’s coolers.
When Grove Christian Outreach Center opened The Gathering Place, the greater Williamsburg area’s first free grocery store, it had no trouble keeping coolers stocked with produce.
The center provided free food, clothes and financial help to people in need for two decades before adopting a store model for its pantry in late 2024. But by the middle of 2025, Katie Patrick, the center’s executive director, noticed its refrigerators weren’t filling up like before.
“I would walk in and I’d be like, ‘why aren’t those full?,’” Patrick said. “Those used to be full to the brim all the time.”
The center was doing nothing different, yet donations of fresh food fell by roughly half. Grove leaders searched for answers. They learned that stores, which donated unsold food to pantries, are now using AI systems to streamline stocking and ordering.
Industries worldwide are using big data analytics and predictive modeling, commonly called artificial intelligence or AI. Grocery retailers are doing the same.
It's good business for stores. AI models help them track what and how much produce to stock to reduce food waste. Less waste helps profits for notoriously tight-margined grocers.
That isn't food waste to pantries, though; it’s a lifeline. Grove, like many pantries in the U.S., participates in Feeding America’s Retail Rescue program in partnership with regional food banks.
It connects grocers with service organizations that distribute good food that, for various reasons, would have been discarded. Local collections are managed by the Virginia Peninsula Foodbank, which creates schedules for pantries such as Grove to pick up food.
“A lot of that fresh produce, especially the fruits and vegetables – things that are more expensive for our food-insecure neighbors, therefore more valuable to them because they’re so out of reach – are coming in shorter supply,” Patrick said.
The Grove community is a working-class area designated as a food desert by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The decrease in fresh produce means the center has to give smaller amounts to its patrons.
“We’re still doing something for everybody that comes through our door,” Patrick said. “We’ve just tempered back a little bit with how much we’re able to offer you when you come in for groceries today on the fresh food side.”
The center’s store serves up to 300 families per week from Williamsburg, James City County and upper York County. Ten percent or more of residents in the three localities are food insecure as of 2023, with Williamsburg’s rate surpassing 13%, according to Feeding America.
She said long-term, decreasing the accessibility of produce will lead to worse health outcomes for people living paycheck to paycheck. Poor nutrition is linked to several chronic health problems and diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Continued hypertension, continued high blood pressure, continued obesity; those are all things that are caused by a poor diet,” Patrick said.
Patrick said they’re taking a multipronged approach to solutions, including increasing relationships with specific grocers and farmers to increase donations and raising money to buy more fresh food. It also plans to bolster its stock with produce grown at the recently acquired Rob Till Community Garden in Grove by volunteers and students.
Patrick said those strategies will help Grove do “the best we can with the resources that we have, stretching them a little thinner sometimes.”
