Free Treats source

[yyz0yyz0]

If anyone lives/works near an Edible Arrangements shop, stop in and ask about their scraps and what they do with them.

I've been getting 2 5gal pails full of melon halves, pulp and seeds twice a week for free. The halves I'm getting are the ones they use the melon baller on for making the fruit lollipops, probably half of the melon flesh is still there for the chickens to devour as well as all the pulp and seeds.

I"ve also gotten strawberries and blueberries that were too small or starting to go soft so they couldn't use them but they were still ok for the chickens. They also use Kale in their arrangements so you can get kale scraps as well.

 

[yyz0yyz0]

P.S.
forgot to mention, since they don't cook food they don't have automated dishwashing.

So, we had to take extra measures to ensure I don't bring any contamination into their shop. What we ended up doing in my case was I scored some food clean 5gal buckets from my work cafe and after running them through my dishwasher at home, they get left at the Edible store in their walkin cooler. Then I show up with other clean buckets which I transfer the current scraps to and rinse the buckets that get left at the store and put the back in the walkin for them to refill.
The buckets I use to transport the scraps home don't go out to the chicken run and they don't get washed in the garage sink I clean chicken stuff in. They get dumped into other buckets to take to the chickens then the transport buckets get washed in our kitchen. It's a bit of extra work but the chickens love it and I feel it's worth the effort to protect the store as much as I can from contamination.

I was at another store where they just set the full garbage cans out the back door and someone came and emptied them outside the store, so that's another option.