2026 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit
May 19–21, 2026 | Charlotte, NC
The Westin Charlotte
Summit Schedule
From mainstage and breakout sessions to networking events, workshops, screenings, happy hours, a trivia challenge, and more, this year's Summit promises to be our most jam-packed yet. Here's a look at what's in store!
[Optional] Side Meetings & Workshops
[Optional] Field Trips
Food Waste Trivia & Food Flicks
Welcome Reception/10-Year Anniversary Kick-Off
Breakfast
“Progress in Action: Scaling Solutions to Food Waste”
Mainstage
Ten years ago, ReFED's Roadmap to Reduce U.S. Food Waste set an ambitious vision for transforming the way America produces, manages, and thinks about food waste. Since then, the field has grown, solutions have scaled, and momentum has built in ways both measurable and inspiring. But with urgency still high and much work remaining, this opening session is as much about what comes next as it is about how far we've come. ReFED President Dana Gunders will set the stage with a look at the field's most meaningful accomplishments from the past year and the bright spots ahead on the horizon. A panel of founders/CEOs will share candid reflections on what it took to grow their solutions from early-stage ideas into mainstream impact—offering hard-won lessons on how innovation and investment align for success. And the session will close on a high note with the announcement of the newest grantees of the ReFED Catalytic Grant Fund, celebrating the next wave of solutions poised to move the needle in the decade ahead.
Speakers
Networking Break
“Feeding Many, Wasting Less: Food Waste Solutions for Institutional Foodservice”
Breakout
Schools, hospitals, universities, and correctional facilities all share something important—they serve enormous volumes of food every day under unique operational constraints that restaurants and households simply don't face. From overproduction and rigid menu cycles to unpredictable attendance and limited staff capacity, institutional foodservice settings generate a distinct set of front- and back-of-house food waste challenges that demand targeted, setting-specific solutions. This session takes a practical look at what's actually working across the institutional landscape. Panelists will explore how wins in one type of institution can serve as a replicable model for others, and what it takes to build the internal will and operational infrastructure to make lasting change at scale.
Speakers
Megan Holler | Toward Zero Waste
Joe Richardson | Lunch Out of Landfills
“Cutting Through the Clutter: Crafting Consumer Messages That Drive Impact”
Breakout
Not surprisingly, consumers are at the center of the food waste challenge—yet most aren't wasting food out of carelessness but rather because they don't know how to manage it properly. That information is out there, but in a world overflowing with competing messages, getting it to land is a challenge unto itself. This session features consumer messaging practitioners working across retail, university extension, and municipal settings sharing what worked, what didn't, and what they learned about meeting consumers where they are—from the language and visuals that resonate, to the channels and moments that are most ripe for influence.
Speakers
“From the Ranch to the Table: A Deep Dive into Beef”
Breakout
Beef remains one of the most resource-intensive and widely consumed proteins in the American diet—which means waste at any point in the supply chain carries an outsized economic and environmental cost. Yet the full picture of where and how beef is wasted remains surprisingly incomplete. From pasture and processing to retail cases and dinner plates, critical blind spots persist that limit our ability to act with precision and purpose. This session will unite both the research and the practice, examining where data is strong, where gaps remain, and how to close them, with tools like mass-based measurement, traceability systems, and supply chain feedback loops that can drive smarter decisions and meaningful reductions.
“Making Measurement Matter: From Compliance Pressures to Operational Impacts”
Breakout
For many organizations, building a reliable food waste tracking system is time-consuming, technically complex, and difficult to sustain—which makes it all the more important to understand what you get out of it. When it’s done right, the answer is a lot: actionable data that drives operational improvements, stronger ESG and sustainability disclosures, and a foundation for navigating a regulatory environment that is becoming more demanding by the year. This session helps attendees cut through the noise: understanding what regulatory requirements are actually on the horizon, how the evolving GHG Protocol methodology relates to food waste accounting, and how to build measurement models that serve multiple outcomes at once—so that the effort of tracking waste pays dividends well beyond the compliance checkbox.
Speakers
"The Packaging Paradox: An Open Dialogue on Packaging's Role in Food Waste"
Breakout
Packaging is one of the most powerful—and paradoxical—tools in the fight against food waste. Done well, it extends shelf life, protects against damage, enables portion control, and communicates critical information to consumers. Done poorly, it forces unnecessary bulk purchases, fails to protect its contents, and creates additional headaches for food recovery and recycling efforts. Our featured speakers will discuss how they are navigating the thorny issue of packaging, but we want to hear from you, too. Come ready to listen, share, and shape the dialogue around one of the food system's most complex and consequential design challenges.
Speakers
Lunch
"The Full Footprint: The Real Climate Cost of Food Waste and How to Talk About It"
Breakout
Food waste is a climate problem—but not just in the ways most people think. Its full environmental toll touches some of the most potent forces driving climate change. Methane and nitrous oxide, both superpollutants with warming potential far exceeding that of CO2, are released throughout the food waste lifecycle. Refrigerants used across the cold chain rank among the most harmful greenhouse gases on the planet. Synthetic fertilizers used to grow food that is never eaten carry their own enormous emissions footprint. And that's before accounting for the staggering volumes of water embedded in discarded food, or the social cost of carbon—a measure of the true economic harm of emissions. This session is designed to give attendees both the scientific grounding to understand these impacts and the messaging tools to communicate them in ways that are honest, accessible, and built to bring more people to the table.
Speakers
“Right-Sizing the Plate: How Customizable Portions Can Win Customers and Cut Waste”
Diners are sending a clear signal to the restaurant and foodservice industry—they want more control over how much they order, and they're choosing where to eat based on who gives it to them. Flexible, customizable portion options aren't just a food waste strategy; they're a competitive advantage. This session uses new research on customizable portions as a springboard for a practical, wide-ranging conversation about what right-sizing looks like when it moves from concept to menu. Featuring case studies from restaurants and foodservice operators, panelists will share how reimagined portion offerings better align with what diners actually want.
Speakers
Abby Fammartino | Menus of Change University Research Collaborative
“Learning from Nature: Biomimicry as a Blueprint for Food Waste Prevention”
Breakout
Nature produces no waste—every output becomes another organism's input, and every system is optimized for efficiency over millions of years of evolution. So what happens when food innovators start learning from the living world? This session explores how designers, scientists, and entrepreneurs are applying the principles of biomimicry to reimagine food waste reduction and using nature-inspired design to yield breakthroughs that mirror natural ecosystems. Attendees will come away with a fresh perspective on how looking outward—to forests, oceans, and even the microscopic world—may hold the most elegant answers to one of our most urgent food system challenges.
Speakers
"Building the Foundation: Infrastructure Solutions for Food Waste Diversion"
Breakout
Composting facilities, anaerobic digesters, and other post-consumer diversion infrastructure represent the critical last line of defense against food ending up in landfills—yet in much of the country, that infrastructure simply doesn't exist at the scale needed. The gap between the organic waste being generated and the capacity available to process it responsibly remains one of the most stubborn challenges in the food waste field. This session takes a hard look at what it will take to close that gap—examining the policy frameworks, funding mechanisms, and public-private partnerships that are either accelerating or impeding infrastructure development across the country. Panelists will share what communities and states leading the way have gotten right, what barriers continue to stall progress, and how advocates, investors, and policymakers can work together to build the diversion backbone that a waste-free food system demands.
TBA
Breakout
Meetings & Networking
“The Big Picture: Megatrends Shaping the Future of Food Waste”
Mainstage
Food waste isn’t a single problem with a single solution—it’s a complex, interconnected challenge shaped by forces that cut across every sector, setting, and stakeholder. This session zooms out to examine the sweeping trends that are redefining what's possible in the fight against food waste, and how leaders across the field can harness them to accelerate impact. Artificial intelligence is transforming everything from demand forecasting and inventory management to consumer-facing apps and supply chain visibility—but realizing its potential while navigating its risks requires intentionality. And social media—now so embedded in daily life that many can barely imagine a world without it—is emerging as a powerful force for driving awareness, shifting norms, and inspiring action at scale. We’ll bring these threads together in a dynamic conversation about where the biggest opportunities lie—and how the food waste field can ride these megatrends rather than be left behind by them.
Speakers
Happy Hour Reception
[Optional] No-Host Dinners
Breakfast
“Home Grown: How Place, Culture, and Policy Are Shaping the Future of Food Waste in North Carolina”
Mainstage
Welcome to North Carolina, a state with a food story that is richer, more complex, and instructive than most. This session uses North Carolina as a lens through which to examine food waste from angles that rarely share the same stage: we’ll share research on household food waste patterns across the state; shine a spotlight on Black farmers and cultural foodways and the role of heritage and community food traditions in shaping the broader food system; and host a conversation about how new policies ripple through food culture—and how food culture, in turn, shapes what becomes politically possible. From farm to kitchen to community table, North Carolina offers a vivid illustration of how place-based knowledge, cultural identity, and policy momentum can reinforce or undermine one another—and how you can move the needle when you take the whole picture into account.
Speakers
Christine Wittmeier | North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality
Networking Break
"Global Gains: International Food Waste Reduction and What We Can Learn"
Breakout
Food waste is a shared global challenge—and around the world, innovative coalitions of governments, businesses, and communities are making measurable progress through bold commitments and coordinated action. This session takes a tour of the international landscape, spotlighting initiatives that are moving the needle and the frameworks driving their success.
“Crowd Control: Smarter Food Waste Strategies for High-Volume Events”
Breakout
From corporate conferences and conventions to large sporting events and concerts, events are among the most prolific—and most overlooked—generators of food waste. The combination of high-volume catering, cultural pressure to ensure tables are overflowing, and the push to craft memorable experiences creates a perfect storm of overproduction and excess. Yet these settings also present a uniquely concentrated opportunity: when meeting planners, venues, and the cities they operate in commit to doing things differently, the impact can demonstrate that sustainability and hospitality are anything but mutually exclusive. This session brings together practitioners across the events and hospitality industry to share the strategies, tools, and mindset shifts that are making a measurable difference—and how they can serve as best practices that inform other food waste situations.
Speakers
“The Art of the Possible: State and Local Policy Success Stories”
Breakout
Policy is one of the most powerful levers for driving systemic change. But the path from a compelling idea to enacted legislation is rarely straight—it requires coalition building, strategic timing, political savvy, and no small amount of persistence. This session skips the theory and gets into the details. Through three in-depth case studies drawn from successful state and local policy initiatives, panelists will walk attendees through the real story of how change happened—who the key players were, how opposition was navigated, what compromises were made, and what made the difference in the end. Whether you're a seasoned policy advocate or new to the legislative arena, this session offers a rare, unfiltered look at the art and science of moving food waste policy from concept to reality.
TBA
Breakout
TBA
Breakout
Networking Break
“A Decade of Impact: Celebrating Success and Charting the Path Forward”
Mainstage
Three days of bold ideas, candid conversations, and cross-sector connections—and here’s where we bring it all together. This closing session reunites some of the original architects of ReFED's first Roadmap to reflect on the journey from vision to impact and to share what they believe the next chapter must look like if we are to meet the scale of the challenge ahead. But this isn't just a look back. Drawing on the themes, tensions, and breakthroughs surfaced throughout the Summit, our closing panel will help attendees synthesize what they've heard and turn inspiration into intention and ultimately action. Through an interactive discussion designed to spark reflection and action, every person in the room will leave with concrete next steps—and a renewed sense of the collective momentum behind this work. This session is a reminder of how far we've come—and a challenge to make the next ten years count even more.
Speakers
Lunch (with To-Go Option)
[Optional] Workshops