How do cross-sector partnerships enable the participation of small retailers in urban food recovery and redistribution? Evidence from Italian cities

Abstract

Surplus food recovery and redistribution (FR&R) have gained prominence as a strategy to improve food access and reduce food waste. Urban areas offer favourable conditions for implementing collaborative FR&R practices due to the spatial proximity of surplus food donors, food-insecure people, nonprofit organizations, public authorities, and other relevant actors. Among these, small retailers – i.e. neighbourhood shops and vendors operating within indoor food markets – may possess unique resources that could contribute to cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) aimed at surplus food valorisation and social inclusion. However, unlike large retailers, they remain largely underrepresented in FR&R networks and in international scientific literature. To address this gap, this study adopts a Resource-Based View to investigate seven CSPs across the cities of Genoa, Milan, Rome, and Turin, in Italy. Findings reveal that small retailers may provide as distinctive and valuable resources for urban FR&R fresh and nutritious surplus food and trust-based, territorially embedded relations with local communities and nonprofit organisations. However, they struggle with variable surplus food quantities, the lack of appropriate equipment to handle perishable products, limited time and knowledge to properly handle donation tasks and low economic incentives. The study reveals that CSPs may mitigate these barriers by pooling, combining and deploying a unique set of partners’ tangible and intangible resources that complement those mobilized by small retailers. In this context indoor food markets emerge as strategic public assets that aggregate vendors supplying fresh nutritious surplus food, non-profit organizations and food poor citizens and attract resources from various stakeholders in the same place, enabling the diversification and enhancement of urban FR&R.