it is so so very sweet and generous of you to care about that red velvet loaf, but as long as you are corporate i highly highly doubt you will be hunted down at all. think about it, how much product do we hand off to customers, especially during covid when we can’t take back even minor mistakes and fix them, and that product goes unaccounted for, all in the spirit of ‘making the moment right’? i even take a teavana sparkling blood mango tea from rtd+e every now and again when i close and no one bats an eye. at the end of the day cameras are only really looked at (if there even was a camera that covered where you took said red velvet loaf) when there is serious criminal activity. i really don’t think you should stress, although your stress signifies you genuinely care.

I know every store is different, but I've talked to every manager and shift at my store and they all agree that throwing out perfectly good food is so wasteful and we might as well take it. It's messed up that food service and retail corporations mandate throwing out and destroying perfectly good products when it doesn't make a difference on their end. Your shift leads wouldn't let baristas take home expiring food if corporate was in the habit of reviewing security footage to fire people for taking expired red velvet loaves instead of tossing them. It's okay.

My shifts & SM always offer us “expired” food. Normally we donate it to the food pantry, but they’re not taking donations right now apparently