The Spare Food Co. has been awarded a national contract with Premier Inc., one of the largest healthcare group purchasing organizations in the US. Spare Burger and Spare Ground are now available to Premier's member network of healthcare accounts and non-healthcare foodservice operations, including colleges and universities, K–12 schools, senior living communities, corporate kitchens, regional dining groups and more.

Designed as a true one-for-one replacement for conventional ground beef, Spare Burger and Spare Ground require no new equipment, retraining or workflow adjustments. Made from responsibly raised, grass-fed beef and 30% roasted surplus vegetables, Spare Beef is not a plant-based alternative or imitation product — it is beef and vegetables, combined. The result delivers the same culinary performance and versatility chefs rely on with conventional beef, while offering fewer calories, lower cholesterol and less saturated fat than 100% ground beef, appealing to nutrition-driven customers.

All products maintain a short, clean ingredient list, are free of ultra-processed ingredients allergen free and Halal certified — attributes especially relevant in healthcare and institutional environments where nutrition standards, procurement requirements, and operational consistency are critical.

This contract builds on foodservice-first momentum for Spare. The company's original product, Spare Starter — a chef-crafted, versatile, vegan meal starter made from surplus farm produce — validated Spare's core approach: reducing waste, streamlining labor and meeting sustainability goals with clean ingredients and without sacrificing flavor or flexibility. As culinary teams adopted Spare Starter in large-scale kitchens, a pattern emerged: in a majority of applications, chefs were using it specifically to reduce the amount of animal protein in recipes that traditionally relied on 100% ground beef.  That real-world insight directly informed the development of Spare Burger and Spare Ground — not to create an imitation product, but to offer a straightforward combination of beef and vegetables that works exactly like conventional ground beef, helping kitchens reduce beef usage, food waste and carbon emissions while fitting seamlessly into existing menus and workflows.

"From the beginning, we've focused on creating food that works in real kitchens — delicious and made from simple ingredients, implementable at scale and under real-world operational constraints, and measurably better than the products they are intended to replace," said Adam Kaye, chef and co-founder of The Spare Food Co. "This contract with Premier validates that approach at a national level. It proves you can deliver a familiar, better-tasting product made with only beef and vegetables, that operators trust and diners genuinely enjoy and help meet the demand for healthier, more plant-forward meals without asking diners to make dramatic shifts in how they eat."

In practice, chefs use Spare Burger and Spare Ground exactly as they would conventional ground beef — as a true one-for-one replacement in burgers, meatballs, sauces, chili, tacos, and other composed dishes. By substituting Spare Beef in place of traditional ground beef, operators can reduce beef volume and food waste while maintaining consistency across recipes and meeting diner expectations.

Spare Beef products are already on menus at higher-education institutions including Princeton University, Syracuse University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in partnership with ISS Guckenheimer and their corporate clients, and at companies such as LinkedIn and Kirkland & Ellis. Additional volume continues to expand across foodservice operators and healthcare-focused environments nationwide. National distribution through leading broadline partners, including US Foods and Sysco, has further accelerated adoption.

With the popularity of Spare Burger at these locations, Spare kept hearing requests from diners to purchase these products for use at home. As a result, Spare Burger is now also available direct-to-consumer through Misfits Market.

Source: The Spare Food Co.