My biggest gripe about the case is that most people don't even use it properly. They either order whatever picture is on the menu board, or refuse to read the labels for the pastry and point n grunt at what they assume is a croissant.

That’s actually gross. The number of flies and bugs that get into display cases is terrifying

same

Put that into a stronger perspective.

$300 a week times 52 weeks a year, times 32,000 stores...

Let's go conservative. Maybe $300/week is really high. Each store has, what, maybe 20-30 different items they put into their display case each day? Let's be generous and say 20. And those 20 items cost the store $2 in food. An average of .10 an item seems fair, right? Okay, so at $2 a day, over a year, one store's food displays cost the company $730 a year.

Now, maybe only half of Starbucks' 32,000 stores actually have or display food. I dunno, I haven't really been to a lot of different Starbucks in different states or countries. I'm just figuring as low as is reasonably possible. So 16,000 stores blowing $730 a year. That's still over $11 million in waste. And I'm sure my numbers are WAY on the low end.

At mine we USED to donate them cause I’m at a university and there would be people that picked up donations so all the expired food and food from the case would go into a tin and we’d cover it with plastic wrap and it would be sent to some donation or our employees would take some of the food
however the donation people only come once a week and so we stopped donating since it just kept overfilling and now we throw everything away at the end of the night