Surplus is the logistics platform for food rescue — coordinating donors, recipients, drivers, and hubs so surplus food moves safely from those who have it to those who need it. This site documents how the platform works, how to use it, and how to build on it.

What is Surplus?

Surplus is a logistics platform purpose-built for food rescue operations. It coordinates the movement of surplus food from donors (farms, retailers, restaurants, wholesalers) through hubs (warehouses where food is sorted and staged) to recipients (food banks, shelters, community programs) who distribute it to people in need.

The problem Surplus solves

Food rescue involves dozens of moving parts: scheduling pickups from donors with varying availability, dispatching drivers with limited vehicle capacity, routing deliveries through warehouses for sorting, and tracking every pound so programs can report impact to funders and communities.

Without dedicated tooling, coordinators rely on spreadsheets, group texts, and manual data entry — leading to missed pickups, lost inventory, and unreliable impact reporting.

What Surplus provides

• Route planning and execution — schedule multi-stop routes with pickups, deliveries, loads, and unloads; drivers complete stops in sequence from their phone
• Hub warehouse management — track inventory as it arrives, gets sorted, and ships out; allocate items to specific distributions before they leave
• Real-time inventory tracking — every pound is accounted for from the moment it enters the system until it reaches a recipient or is composted
• Partner dashboards — donors and recipients see their own history, upcoming pickups/deliveries, and impact summaries
• Impact analytics — automatic calculation of pounds rescued, meals made possible, CO₂ emissions avoided, and economic value

How everything connects

Surplus is not a collection of separate tools — it is one integrated system where every action feeds into the next:

1. A coordinator schedules a route with pickup and delivery stops
2. A driver completes the route, recording weights at each stop
3. Food arrives at a hub where staff sort, weigh, and allocate inventory
4. Allocated items are loaded onto outbound routes or picked up directly by recipients
5. Every completed distribution feeds the analytics engine, which reports impact in real time

The How it works section below walks through the lifecycle in depth. For a concise reference to the building blocks, see Key concepts.

How it works

Food moves through Surplus in a predictable lifecycle: collection (food enters the system), logistics (food moves between locations), and distribution (food reaches recipients). Every step is recorded, creating a complete chain of custody from donor to community.

The food rescue lifecycle

1. Collection — food enters the system

Food enters Surplus in one of two ways:

• Route pickup — a driver visits a donor location on a scheduled route, loads the food, and records what was received (products, quantities, weights)
• Hub drop-off — a donor delivers food directly to a hub, where staff record the donation on-site

Each collection creates a record of collection event items — the receipt of what was donated — plus corresponding inventory items that track where that food physically lives.

2. Hub operations — sorting, staging, and allocation

When food arrives at a hub, warehouse staff can:

• Sort items — weigh the usable portion separately from waste/trim
• Split items — divide a batch into multiple portions for different destinations
• Allocate items — reserve specific inventory for a planned distribution

3. Loading — food moves from hub to vehicle

When a route is ready to depart, allocated items are loaded from the hub onto the vehicle. This is a distinct step because it represents the physical transfer of custody from the warehouse to the driver.

4. Distribution — food reaches recipients

Distribution happens in two ways:

• Route delivery — a driver delivers allocated items to a recipient location as part of a scheduled route
• Hub pickup — a recipient collects allocated items directly from a hub

When a distribution is completed, the items are marked as distributed — they have left the Surplus system and reached the community.

5. Unloading — returning unsent food to a hub

If a driver has items remaining on their vehicle after completing deliveries, those items are unloaded back into a hub for future allocation.

Routes tie it all together

A route is the vehicle's physical journey for a day or shift. Routes contain ordered stops, and each stop corresponds to one of the events above:

• Collection stops — driver picks up food from a donor
• Load stops — driver receives food from a hub warehouse
• Distribution stops — driver delivers food to a recipient
• Unload stops — driver returns food to a hub warehouse

Stops must be completed in sequence. The route is only finished when all stops are done and the vehicle is empty.

Impact reporting

Every completed distribution feeds directly into the analytics engine. Because Surplus tracks exact weights and products at every step, impact metrics like pounds rescued, meals provided, and emissions avoided are calculated automatically from real operational data — not estimates.

See Impact Measurement for the exact formulas behind each metric.

Key concepts and roles

• Key concepts — organizations, routes, events, and inventory
• Roles and access — who uses what

Use the platform

• Getting started — signing in and navigating the app
• Driver guides — completing routes, pickups, and deliveries
• Admin guides — managing routes, hubs, and analytics
• Partner guides — donor and recipient dashboards

Reference

• Impact measurement — how every metric is calculated
• Terminology — glossary of all terms used in the app

Build on the platform

• Developers — local setup, architecture, API reference