Foodservice Industry Gains Positive Momentum as IFMA Partners With Kindland to Promote Kindness
IFMA The Food Away from Home Association and national nonprofit organization Kindland have announced a new partnership aimed at encouraging kindness throughout the U.S. foodservice industry and the communities it serves. The collaboration seeks to recognize everyday acts of kindness, strengthen relationships among industry professionals and customers, and establish a more consistent culture of compassion across the food-away-from-home ecosystem.
Americans spend more than $1 trillion annually on dining out and purchasing food away from home. Restaurants, cafés, convenience stores, schools, hospitals, and other foodservice establishments play an essential role in the daily lives of millions of people. Beyond preparing meals and delivering products and services, these businesses create opportunities for human interaction, personal connection, and meaningful exchanges between employees, customers, suppliers, and community members.
Through this partnership, IFMA and Kindland aim to make kindness a more visible and recognized part of the foodservice experience. By encouraging organizations to acknowledge positive behavior and provide opportunities for people to participate in acts of kindness, the two organizations hope to build a sustainable movement that benefits workplaces, businesses, and communities nationwide.
IFMA and Kindland Unite Around a Shared Mission
Kindland is a national movement that brings together businesses, organizations, schools, communities, and individuals to recognize, share, and inspire acts of kindness. The initiative aims to make positive actions more visible and encourage others to follow their example, creating a ripple effect of goodwill, connection, and understanding throughout the United States.
The movement promotes the idea that kindness can influence how people interact in their daily lives. By highlighting positive behavior and encouraging individuals to acknowledge the contributions of others, Kindland seeks to help build what it describes as a United States of Kindness.
For IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, the partnership aligns with its broader mission of connecting and supporting the diverse organizations that make up the foodservice industry. The Association represents an ecosystem that includes manufacturers, foodservice operators, supply chain partners, and service providers. Bringing these groups together around a shared commitment to kindness provides another opportunity to strengthen relationships and encourage positive change.
“IFMA The Food Away from Home Association is pleased to be part of this national kindness movement,” said Phil Kafarakis, the Association’s President and CEO. “Kindland’s mission dovetails with our own purpose to empower, nurture and connect our ecosystem of manufacturers, operators, supply chain partners and service providers.”
The collaboration reflects the organizations’ shared belief that strong industry relationships depend not only on business performance and operational efficiency but also on the way people treat one another. By encouraging kindness across the foodservice value chain, the initiative aims to help create more supportive workplaces and positive customer experiences.
Kindness Is Served Here Program Encourages Industry Participation
As part of the partnership, IFMA is encouraging its members to participate in Kindland’s Kindness Is Served Here program. The initiative is designed to recognize and celebrate acts of kindness that occur every day throughout the food industry.
Participating organizations can sign up to receive free materials and resources to help communicate their commitment to kindness. One of the program’s key resources is a “Kindness Is Served Here” door cling, which businesses can display prominently at their establishments.
The display is intended to communicate that kindness is a core organizational value. It can help remind employees, customers, suppliers, and visitors that respectful interactions and thoughtful actions are an important part of the business’s culture.
The program also provides an opportunity for foodservice organizations to recognize that kindness can take many forms. It may involve an employee helping a colleague during a busy shift, a team member assisting a customer with a special request, or a manager acknowledging the efforts of staff members who consistently provide thoughtful service.
These everyday interactions can influence the overall atmosphere of a workplace or establishment. When employees feel respected and customers are treated with consideration, businesses have an opportunity to create more welcoming environments and strengthen relationships with the people they serve.
“Food and kindness have always gone hand in hand,” said Stuart Muszynski, CEO of the Values-in-Action Foundation (VIA), the national nonprofit organization that presents Kindland.
“Every step of the food experience creates an opportunity for human connection, from the person stocking a shelf or preparing a meal to the employee who greets a customer with a smile and thanks them for stopping in. Customers return that kindness by showing patience, gratitude, understanding and respect. These may seem like small moments, but together they can have an extraordinary impact.”
Muszynski’s comments emphasize the shared responsibility of employees, businesses, and customers in creating positive experiences. A welcoming interaction at a restaurant, a considerate exchange at a convenience store, or a thoughtful gesture in a school cafeteria can contribute to a broader culture of mutual respect.
By encouraging foodservice businesses to recognize these moments, the partnership aims to demonstrate that kindness does not require elaborate programs or significant financial investments. Instead, consistent attention to everyday behavior can help establish lasting habits across the industry.
Kindness Wednesday to Launch the Giving Season
A key component of the partnership will be participation in Kindland’s first-ever Kindness Wednesday, scheduled for December 2, 2026. Observed on the Wednesday following Thanksgiving, the new national tradition is intended to begin the holiday giving season by encouraging Americans to perform, recognize, and share acts of kindness on the same day.
IFMA members are invited to support the initiative by introducing Kindness Wednesday to employees, customers, suppliers, and business partners. Participating organizations can encourage their networks to mark the occasion through simple actions that demonstrate appreciation, generosity, and consideration for others.
Foodservice businesses have several opportunities to participate. Employees can recognize a colleague’s contributions, managers can thank team members for their dedication, and businesses can encourage customers to show patience and appreciation toward frontline workers. Organizations may also motivate employees to support individuals facing difficulties or identify opportunities to help others in their communities.
These activities can be incorporated into existing workplace communications and employee engagement efforts. By sharing the message with suppliers and business partners, organizations can also extend the initiative beyond their own locations and encourage participation throughout their networks.
The timing of Kindness Wednesday is intended to complement the season’s broader emphasis on generosity and community support. By giving kindness a dedicated day, Kindland hopes to encourage more people to take intentional action and recognize the positive impact of their behavior.
For the foodservice industry, the initiative offers an opportunity to highlight the people whose daily work keeps businesses operating and communities supplied with meals and food products. It also encourages customers and business partners to contribute to a more respectful and supportive environment.
Using Technology to Recognize Acts of Kindness
In addition to participating in organized activities, individuals can use Kindland’s Just Be Kind® App to record and share acts of kindness they perform, experience, or witness.
The app provides a straightforward way for participants to document positive actions and make them more visible to others. By sharing these experiences, users can help demonstrate how individual gestures contribute to a broader culture of goodwill within their communities.
The tool is intended to make recognizing kindness part of everyday life rather than limiting participation to special occasions. Employees, customers, and community members can use it to acknowledge thoughtful actions that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Within the foodservice sector, examples could include recognizing a coworker who offers assistance during a demanding shift, acknowledging an employee who goes out of their way to help a customer, or sharing an experience involving a business that supports people in need.
Recording these actions can encourage others to look for similar opportunities in their own workplaces and communities. As more people recognize and share positive behavior, individual experiences can become part of a larger narrative about the importance of compassion and mutual respect.
The app also supports the broader objectives of the Kindland movement by providing a way to collect and share examples of kindness across different communities. Through participation, individuals can help illustrate how small actions can contribute to stronger connections between people.
Why Kindness Matters in the Foodservice Industry
Kindness can play an important role in building healthier relationships, more supportive workplaces, and stronger communities. Research has associated kindness and prosocial behavior with several positive outcomes, including greater happiness, a stronger sense of belonging and connectedness, reduced stress and anxiety, improved well-being, and healthier personal and professional relationships.
These benefits are particularly relevant to foodservice, an industry in which employees and customers interact frequently and often under time-sensitive conditions. Restaurant teams, cafeteria workers, convenience store employees, and other frontline professionals regularly balance customer expectations with operational demands.
In these environments, respectful communication and considerate behavior can help improve everyday interactions. Recognizing employees’ contributions may support a more positive workplace culture, while patience and understanding between customers and service teams can contribute to better experiences on both sides.
Kindness can also strengthen relationships across the supply chain. Manufacturers, distributors, operators, and service providers depend on effective communication and cooperation to meet shared objectives. A culture that values respect and appreciation can help reinforce those professional relationships.
The Kindland movement seeks to encourage these outcomes by bringing businesses, schools, organizations, communities, and individuals together around a common purpose. Its approach focuses on identifying and celebrating positive actions, making them more visible, and inspiring others to participate.
Through its partnership with Kindland, IFMA is extending its efforts to connect the food-away-from-home community and encourage meaningful industry-wide engagement. The initiative provides members with opportunities to participate in a national movement while reinforcing the human relationships that support their businesses.
Building a Lasting Culture of Kindness
The collaboration between IFMA and Kindland highlights the potential for everyday actions to create meaningful change across the foodservice industry. Through the Kindness Is Served Here program, Kindness Wednesday, and the Just Be Kind® App, participating organizations and individuals can recognize positive behavior and encourage greater involvement in their communities.
Rather than treating kindness as an occasional gesture, the partnership aims to make it a consistent part of workplace culture, customer service, and professional relationships. By encouraging people to acknowledge one another’s contributions and respond with patience, gratitude, and respect, the initiative seeks to create benefits that extend beyond individual interactions.
As foodservice businesses continue to serve millions of Americans each day, the partnership offers a reminder that the industry’s influence reaches beyond the meals and products it provides. The way employees, customers, and business partners interact also helps shape the experiences and communities connected to the sector.
Through this national effort, IFMA and Kindland hope to inspire foodservice organizations to lead by example and demonstrate how kindness can strengthen workplaces, improve customer experiences, and foster more connected communities. Their shared goal is to turn small, everyday actions into a sustained movement that makes kindness a visible and valued part of life across the United States.
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