NRA 2025: How Careit Connects Kitchens to Communities With a Tech-First Approach
After any hotel banquet or restaurant event, the sheer volume of leftover food can be staggering. But while most operators focus on labor, inventory, or cost containment, one increasingly urgent opportunity—turning surplus into social good—is gaining traction thanks to tech solutions like Careit.
Founded in 2015 by Alyson Schill, a self-described “waste nerd” and nonprofit veteran, Careit offers an enterprise-grade platform for food donation logistics, helping hospitality businesses offload edible surplus safely and seamlessly.
“Up until now, the majority of food donations have come from grocery stores or wholesalers,” Schill explains. “But we're still throwing away 40% of the food produced in the US, while 1 in 6 Americans faces food insecurity. That’s a huge gap—and a huge opportunity.”
Seeking Integration Partners
According to Schill, Careit is an easy, incentive-driven solution for businesses facing new local and state mandates around food waste diversion.
Careit’s core platform is designed to serve the full ecosystem of food recovery stakeholders—from hotels and restaurants to nonprofits and government agencies. Its enterprise dashboard supports compliance tracking, donation scheduling, liability documentation, and impact reporting.
For enterprise IT teams, integration is often the biggest hurdle. Careit has built the backend capability to integrate with popular kitchen and inventory software platforms—now, Schill says, they’re to partner with platforms that want to make donation logging part of their sustainability toolkit.
“We have an API and we’re ready to integrate with solutions for recipe management, inventory, and food costing,” she says. “We want to make it as easy as tapping a button on the kitchen iPad: five trays of lasagna left? Hit send. That donation is routed to a nonprofit, logged for tax credit, and tracked for sustainability impact.”
Feed People, Not Landfills
With food costs rising, restaurant closures mounting, and emergency food programs dwindling, Schill warns that food insecurity is climbing—even as donations lag.
“There are four times as many people seeking emergency food assistance now than there were before the pandemic,” she says. “And we’re still only rescuing 2% of what’s possible.”
For CTOs and technology leads in hospitality, Schill offers a simple call to action: “Food waste is stupid. Especially when we have the tools to fix it—and people who desperately need that food.”