Bumping this up!
Have made a renewed effort to try to urban forage / food rescue additional groceries in the fuzzy household. Work recently has caused me to be driving home late at night after stores are closed and I've hit the jackpot.
Aldi - 2 stores in town the larger town where I work, one is preferred due to having a side slide opening dumpster where its easier to grab things. Have foraged many tomatoes, sweet potatoes, grapes, onions etc. Another Aldi in a remote town has a consistently full dumpster with questionable produce. Their dumpster is in a really out of the way place where I have no qualms about daytime rescue. Anything super gross becomes compost for the chickens.
Natural grocers - this place is amazing! Nearly everything is organic. None of the food is wrapped in plastic or ever placed in garbage bags. It all goes into cardboard banana boxes, which keeps things from suffocating and prolongs their lifespan. The employees seem to trim individual leaves etc off of lettuces when they're soft so there are lots of loose scraps. Found at least 20 bunches of collard greens (excellent food for my kid's lizard), a couple pounds of brussels sprouts, lots more tomatoes, cucumber, celery and bell peppers. By far tomatoes and bell peppers seem to be the items that get a bit weird looking / slightly soft and then get thrown out.
Panera - 3 local restaurants in town, I checked one at night and either they regularly put food out on a cart for people to take (lots of food rescuers locally), or they just forgot to wheel it to the dumpster that night. Filled my compact hatchback with about 70 loaves of bread, 50 bagels and a ton of sliced stuff that they use to make sandwiches from. Also found 8 food service pouches of mac n cheese (it appears they boil or microwave individual servings in the bag). Unfortunately I'm gluten free but the fam is not. Everyone ate bagels for days, bread bowls and sandwiches. About 90% of it went to the local free store where lots of nearly homeless and food insecure people come to get food on the daily. I donate extra eggs from my brood there too.
This week I've eaten mainly free food - made a cucumber/tomato/onion salad, broiled some sweet potato fries, made chili (only added meat and beans), roasted brussels sprouts with bacon and maple syrup(not free), and salvaged onions.
Tools:
I've been meaning to get a grabber for when I can't reach items.
Also wanting to find our laser gun thermometer to verify whether things are safe or not.
Bring plastic bags or bins, things get soggy. Sometimes a whole bag of tomatoes are thrown out simply because one is crushed.
Exam gloves... bare hands in slime is not my style, and reusable gloves would get gross fast
Produce rinse - I liberally squirt and soak all my produce. Anything too funky goes right to the chicken coop or just gets thrown away.
Stores that suck - Nearly all major chains have large dumpsters with inside the store access and crushers. I do not actually climb inside dumpsters. Walmart, Hyvee, Sams club, target etc. Walmarts also have ones that are smaller but are always padlocked.