From my supermarket days, the only food we could donate was packaged products that didn’t require refrigeration or hot holding. I.e, no loose rolls or muffins from the self service case, no deli sandwiches, etc. We could donate day old packaged bread or rolls and things like cookies and other packaged baked goods. If it left the store it was trash, no questions asked.
Back in Oct. 2011, we had a foot or more of heavy wet snow, with most of the leaves still on the trees. Many places last power for a 4-9 days. Most of the stores lost power for a minimum of 24 hrs, the I worked at was out for 48 hours until a large (500kW) diesel generator was bought in. Until then we had only had emergency lighting, registers and a few outlets running on the small (80kw ish) natural gas generator the store had. With such a large area out (something like 80% of CT and Western MA), their weren’t enough reefer trailers or dry ice to go around. We had people complain left ad right they couldn’t buy or we would donate the food that had been at room temperature for a day or more.