One of the supermarket tabloids reported this, so it must be at least as true as the space alien baby kidnappers and the ghosts in the attic: You can get a decent meal out of a dumpster and never get your hands dirty. Well, almost never.
The paper says that under cover of darkness, you can stalk the dumpsters of the fanciest restaurants around and come up with discarded food, often carefully packaged and sealed against whatever else lives in the dumpster. Same with fast food joints like Starbucks, whose franchise agreements demand owners throw out perfectly good stuff at the end of the day.
Save a bundle on groceries that way.
Of course, these days, the pickings are slimmer than they once were. Restaurants seat and don’t seat indoor patrons with fair regularity in proportion to the fears or casecounts in the Covid Rush. But the fast food joints remain open, at least at the drive-through window.
Restaurants don’t donate this stuff to food pantries because they fear lawsuits that result from someone eating something contaminated. Same with supermarkets which discard packaged food with “sell by” dates that have passed by only several hours.
A recent exploration found a dozen packages of salad, some neatly wrapped onions a few boxes of soup mix and a few pounds of chopped beef in a dumpster. All were expired by something like five hours. In the coming colder weather, that’s like taking the stuff home and leaving it in the refrigerator a day or two beyond the “sell by” date.
Required tools for your own Operation Dumpster: a box of disposable gloves, a roll of paper towels, a stepladder, a flashlight and a supply of decent garbage bags. Put on the gloves, climb up the ladder, shine the light in the dumpster, fish around a bit, take what you see, wipe it down with the paper towels and, presto, free lunch. Unless the dumpster bags were torn, it’s safe to use disinfectant wipes.
Some spoilsport restaurants lock their dumpsters or the dumpster enclosures after closing. There are two workarounds. We do NOT recommend them. But, of course it’s up to you.
Padlocks can be picked and chains cut. Employees can be bribed to go for a smoke break after dumping but before they lock up. The downside, of course, is that in one case you are destroying property. That’s bad as well as illegal. In the second case, if you can afford the bribe, you can afford to buy the food like anyone else.
Is all this stealing? Probably. Will you get caught? Maybe. Will you be prosecuted? Probably not. Will you be sickened? Also, probably not. Something you’ve retrieved raises questions? Do what many sport fishermen do: catch and release.
Hearty appetite.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com
© WR 2021
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