A local church is trying to give me a position for community involvement. Although I am busy and rather spend my time elsewhere I will do it because I see the waste of food as an option. There are several homeless shelters around my area and I am sure the lack of quality food is an issue. What is stopping retailers like Pick n Save, Piggly Wiggly, Target, and many others (Kwik Trip) from throwing their food away after they think it is no longer good? I know Pick N Save has a daily salad bar, the food at the salad bar does not go bad in one day. I happily eat it before they take it away. What are the challenges in convincing retailers to allow me to bring the "out of date" food to homeless shelters and churches? 

Costs and liability. It cost money and labor to carry out donations and if anyone gets ill from the food they can be sued.

A bunch of technicalities.

Probably some health and safety issue (not sure what this is like in the US compared to the UK)
Having to store it until you come to collect it
Whether they have some rule that there are only certain charities they can donate to

And Whether they actually care. Can sometimes depend on who you speak to.

Capitalism is what is stopping them. Food is a commodity that must be sold, not given. I don't like it but this is the world we live in.

Giving away food could impact sales if the very same people would be people that could buy from the same stores. A food bank is a supplement and rarely the only source of food for those people. If there was some sort of tax on wasting food, i.e. processing food waste then you can be sure they would be giving it away if that cost them nothing. However it might impact the selling of fresh food if shops were punished for waste and commercially they would be better off selling processed long life food.

Yeah, that's unfortunate

If the food is no good (out-of-date), you can't even give it to anyone, including homeless by law. Food prices for basic goods (wheat, apples, rice, beans, etc) are incredible low, money is not the issue here.

I remember one man who would once a year personally see through the process of donating all of their unsold food for that day. He lamented that it's very expensive and the infrastructure and logistics involved (where to bring it to reach the most people/where it will be stored/who will distribute/how to pay for it etc) make it essentially impossible to do on a daily basis for any but the smallest of food distributors (like a small bakery for instance).

For this to work, especially as far as most produce is concerned, there'd need to be established distribution centers with the financial onus not being entirely on the private businesses themselves, and they'd need to be large enough to handle and distribute that food before it expired. It's a bit like how we can all put our recyclables into the recycle bin, but an enormous amount of it winds up in the dump anyway as we don't have the facilities to actually process 100% of the recycalables that are sent in.

The dates on most food is bs anyways. Best before is just nonsense. The only thing where the actual expiry is of concern is on medicine. Other than that you could probably eat biscuits that were "expired" a month before and get and get away with it. I remember watching something that said the actual reason for best before is that people throw away the things they brought if it goes past that date and buy more so more profit. Its a science in how to manipulate people. The only real way to tell if food is bad if you can visibly see that it's bad or smell that it's bad or taste that it's bad. That's why most food looks and tastes fine after the best before date. All you have to do is keep the food in a collection and dry place because dampness and heat are the two biggest factors for spoilage. Yeah I think it costs money to donate the food they throw away. One eqya of doing it is to incentivise these chains by offering them tax cuts if they do it much like how they get tax cuts for donating to charities. As long as it's legitimate and not scamming people, that feels like the only way, or the government itself has collection centres which cost next to nothing to get to for chains. People say we don;t need government but these private chains will; eat us alive without anyone regulating them. They know how to manipulate us and maximize profits. They'll make slaves out of people before they realize it

Yep, pretty much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1rZAT2GtmI