Food prices across the US soared by some 2.7 percent in 2025 over the last year. And there're indications that food- one of the basic human needs- might get pricier during the year and well beyond 2026 due to various reasons.
Some of these include tariffs imposed on imported foods such as pasta, flour, frozen fruits, vegetables, fish and other stuff by the US President Donald Trump. In fact, an average American household is expected to spend between $2,300 to $4,900 every year depending on their shopping and consumption patterns.
While there may be no straightforward ways to beat this food inflation in USA other than elimination or reduction in tarrifs, there're some tweaks you could use legitimately to slightly buffer your purse or wallet.
Money Americans Spend on Food
Americans are likely to spend $902 billion or more on food in 2025, according to the latest figures available from Statista, the global statistics website. This figure represents money spent on food at supermarkets, restaurants, takeaways and other such places.
A survey by the US Department of Labor and the USDA shows that in 2024, Americans with the lowest income quintile spent an average of $4,875 on food or about 30.6 per cent of their annual income, while persons in the highest income quintile spent an average $13,973 or about seven per cent of their annual income.
Food became expensive by some 7.9 per cent during 2021, the report adds. However, this figure is lower than in 2024 when food prices went through the roof due to the lockdowns and other restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the same time, shockingly, $408 billion worth of food is wasted and thrown away in the USA, according to the charity Feeding America. This represents about 40 per cent of food grown in the USA or some 130 billion meals that end up in dumpsters and trashcans every year in the USA.
Over 47 milliion persons across USA are threatened with total starvation, undernourishment or malnourishment, despite the country being the world's largest economy. According to the latest report by Feeding America, a charity that operates food banks and food pantries in a bid to control hunger states that 14 million children or 20 percent of all American kids now face starvation of lack of adequate nourishment. The figure of 47 million also includes 7.4 million seniors above 60 years of age and 5.2 million older adults aged between 50 and 59 years of age.
As though that's less, some 25 percent of all single moms in USA live with perennial poverty leading to food insecurity. This report by Move for Hunger, an organization aimed at ensuring food security among underprivileged in USA states, 11 million single moms across the country tuck their children to bed on an empty stomach or hungry.
What This Means for You?
If you simply look at these figures, you can easily understand what they mean for you. In brief, these numbers mean you can easily get free food delivered in the USA with no money. In some cases, you would have to go to the places to get free food since free deliveries might not be available.
Remember, a lot of organizations, such as restaurants and superstores, aren’t really doing charity by giving you free food. Instead, they’re making some efforts to limit food wastage in the USA, since it’s a shameful fact that 48 million Americans, including kids, shouldn’t be able to get proper meals daily while 130 billion meals get thrown or roughly 60 million tons of food are wasted every year.
So, where do you get free meals? Continue reading. I will write about some of the time-tested and proven methods for getting free food daily. You could use one or more of these ways to find free food.
How To Get Free Food Delivered With No Money?
Here’s a list of places, apps and other information that could help get free food. Some of these apps and websites or ideas might not work at a few locations in the US due to local laws and legislation. However, most of these apps, websites and tweaks I will speak about now are valid across the USA.
1. Too Good to Go
Too Good to Go is an app that anyone can download and use for free. It’s available for both Android-based smartphone and iPhone users. Basically, Too Good to Go is an initiative to fight the 40 percent food wastage in the USA that I’ve spoken about earlier. Over 10 million Americans have already downloaded this app.
When you download and register, this app will display the places where free food is available. The list includes stores and restaurants, among other places. You have to choose the place of your choice and visit them to get your packet of meals.
There’s one flipside to this app. Some restaurants and food outlets on Too Good to Go charge $3.50 or less for a meal. Understandably, that’s much cheaper than what you would pay elsewhere. Their serving portions are also quite large and, sometimes, enough for two persons. This charge is for the packing material and other stuff needed to hand you the food.
Some stores on Too Good to Go, however, give away select food items free of cost to a limited number of persons daily. You have to be lucky enough to reserve your giveaway on time.
2. Olio
Olio is an app that helps Americans to donate anything directly to persons in need. Download the app and register. Give your exact address and location, with landmark and other details, at the time of registering and keep the location services on your mobile switched on.
Whenever someone has free food- either cooked meals or groceries and other food items, they will take a photo and place it on the app. The donor will also give some other basic details, such as the location to pick up the free food. It can be a public place or even their doorstep.
All you have to do is click on that image and claim the free food giveaway before others grab it. Go to the location and get your free food. Remember, Olio will only show locations nearby where free food is available. This is usually within a mile of your location. However, even if you’re away from home, it will show you giveaways and places to pick up at your other location too.
3. Restaurant Apps
Restaurant chains such as KFC, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut, Domino’s and A&W, among others, have apps for your mobile. Basically, these apps are to help customers order food on the go or from their homes and offices or other places.
All these restaurants, without exception, have consumer loyalty programs. This means the more you order and spend, the higher the number of your rewards. These free points are useful to get good discounts on your next order or a bag of fries or a meal upgrade, a buy-one-get-one offer or even a free meal altogether.
On certain days, these apps have giveaways to celebrate some events, such as the anniversary of the nearest store or a local holiday. They sometimes give away some free food to a few people as part of their celebrations. You can also get a free drink such as coffee, tea or juice or soft drink from these apps occasionally.
4. Freeflys
Freeflys.com is superb website that mails you all sorts of samples for free. Simply sign up on their website, provide some basic details of your household and address among others and wait. Freeflys works like a shopping cart. Meaning, you have to select the free food sample of choice and add it to your cart.
You can request for only one sample of any specific product from a single account. However, there're no upper limits on the total number of different food samples you can request. Therefore, you're free to load your cart with as many free food offers as you wish.
Most free food samples come with brief information. That way, you can check out if the free food contains any allergens such as nuts or even gluten if you're going to give ir r
5. Dumpster Diver Clubs and Groups
There’s a cult or clan that’s known as Dumpster Divers. Their popularity is growing across the world. Though the origins of this group are not clear, it is believed that they first appeared in post- World War-II when food was very scarce, and the country was in shambles. Also, this isn’t an organized group that has any offices or meeting places.
Younger people would check garbage dumpsters outside stores, meat shops, military camps and other places to see if they could find something to eat and take home to a starving family. Some concerned German citizens began using these dumpsters to deliberately leave food packets so that the hungry would find them.
It was a silent way of doing charity and avoiding public glare since giving food away would be tantamount to blasphemy when most people were starving.
However, the latest Dumpster Diver movement is said to have begun in the UK. A teenager, appalled at the amount of food wastage, would dive into garbage dumpsters outside top stores and restaurants and get enough good food- both packed and cooked- to eat. Later, his friends joined the group, and Dumpster Divers became a sort of global cult with a presence in the US too.
You can join a local Dumpster Diver club or group. You have to join others in scavenging dumpsters outside large grocery stores to find packets and cans of perfectly edible food that’s been thrown away. Dumpster Divers also aim at curbing the atrocious volumes of food wasted worldwide.
6. Mystery Diner
Join any market research company that enlists mystery shoppers. If lucky, you might get free breakfast or lunch or dinner or pastries, cookies, and cooked or raw food from top places. The food isn’t actually free: You will pay for it using a credit card or cash, or debit card. And the market research company will pay back the amount you spend.
Market research companies hire mystery diners for a single reason. Restaurant and store owners want an independent review of their food and services, the ambience of the store, ease of shopping and other details. This helps them patch grey areas in their operations and increase efficiency and overall consumer experience.
As a mystery diner or mystery shopper, you have to go to the restaurant or store selected by the market research company, like any other ordinary customer. However, you have to keep an eye open for various details and be sharp enough to gauge the quality of service, ease of use and other such facts. Upon completing each such trip, you’ve to write a detailed review and narrate your experiences.
However, playing mystery shopper isn’t as easy as it sounds. You should have some knowledge about how stores operate. And if you’re going as a mystery diner, surely, you will require a lot of skills on how to judge the quality and taste of food as well as the services of a restaurant and its crew. That’s because the clients of these market research companies want astute and detailed reviews.
7. Vincent de Paul USA
St. Vincent de Paul Society was founded in 1833 in Paris, France, with the objective of helping the very poor. Today, the St. Vincent de Paul Society works all over the world, including in the USA, where it has a very large presence. This society is a Roman Catholic charity but doesn’t discriminate in any way against needy people.
You can get a lot of free food from your local charter or office of St. Vincent de Paul USA. They run food banks across the country and provide essentials to all those in need.
At St. Vincent de Paul USA, you will not have to provide any documents to prove your identity, address, income or age, among other details. All you need to do is simply visit their food bank or food pantry on appointed days and collect the groceries.
8. Feeding America
Another foremost charity in the US where you can get free food is Feeding America. They have food banks and food pantries all over the USA. In fact, it is also said to be one of the largest charities battling hunger and poverty in the US by providing individuals and families with food and a few other resources essential for respectable living.
Feeding America has its own food pantries and food banks at almost every location in the USA. However, some of these food banks and food pantries are run in collaboration with their local partners such as churches and religious organizations, charities and community groups. You can easily find a Feeding America food bank or food pantry nearby.
9. Daily Goodie Box
Daily Goodie Box is an amazing place to get free food but again as samples. Any resident of USA can create an account and request a box of ‘goodies' or ready-to-eat, ready-to-cook or foodstuff from this website. To get these box of goodies, you'll have to register with email and valid mail address.
While Daily Goodie Box doesn't really promise free food deliveries every day, as the website name might suggest, you can get at least one goodie box every fortnight or so. That's because some of these free goodies as they're called, are given for specific locations only and unless you're within that zone, the offer will skip you.
Daily Goodie Box offers free food from small and large American food companies as samples. At times, you might have to provide a brief review to Daily Goodie Box to continue getting free food.
PLEASE ADD LINK HERE: https://dailygoodiebox.com/
10. Idahoan Foodservice
If you love potatoes and potato-based food, try various free food samples from Idahoan Foodservice, a company with over 60 years of excellent track record in crafting ready-to-eat spud based food. All you have to do is select their samples- which are actually sales sized packages- and provide various details such as name, address, contact details and more.
Idahoan Food Service will mail you those food samples free of cost to the address you provide. This is a wonderful website if you're living alone or paying for own food because each of their sample packs packs in a meal in itself. You'll however have to prepare the food at home because these aren't precooked meals, as you might expect.
Is Free Food Worth the Effort?
Yes, indeed. Most Americans are comfortable living under the illusion that they're not poor and hence don't require free food. However, as living costs increase across USA due to various reasons and inflation threatens household savings, it's worth considering the option of getting free food.
If nothing, it could help save some money. However, your quest for free food shouldn't be at the expense of the needy. Therefore, make sure that whenever you get free food from any of the above sources, you're not depriving someone that is genuinely starving or malnourished.
Closing Thoughts
One of the movements I personally support is Dumpster Divers. That’s because they genuinely work to prevent vast volumes of food from being wasted in the USA and elsewhere and help feed the poor too. I don’t believe that it’s worth looking for free food unless you’re desperately broke and starvation is imminent. Yes, accepting free food and giving it to someone hungry is worth the time and effort because it’s a noble deed.
Ashwin (Win) Honawar is an accomplished journalist and poignant author with 33 years of experience. He is renowned for his daredevil journalism and engaging narratives that explore various facts of human life and the resilience of the human spirit.
