Mill Strikes Deal with Amazon's Whole Foods: How Food Waste Data Will Remake Stores Starting in 2027

Your garbage is now a data goldmine. Mill, the food waste startup from the founders of Nest, has locked in a major deal with Amazon's Whole Foods to redefine how the grocery giant handles its leftovers. Beginning in 2027, Whole Foods will deploy a commercial-scale version of Mill's smart food waste bin in all of its grocery stores, turning waste disposal into an intelligence operation.

More Than Just a Bin

Mill's bins do more than just grind and dehydrate food scraps. They will tackle waste from the produce department, cutting costly landfill fees while simultaneously creating feed for the company's egg producers. The real prize, however, is the data. The bins collect information on what gets wasted and why, helping Whole Foods control costs by minimizing waste upstream. "Ultimately, our goal is not just to make their waste operations more efficient, but also to move upstream so they actually waste less food,” Mill co-founder and CEO Matt Rogers told TechCrunch.

From Home to Enterprise: The 'Trojan Horse' Strategy

Mill's move into the commercial space was part of the plan from its Series A deck, but its path was unconventional. The company started by selling bins to households. "Starting in consumer was very intentional because you build the proof points, you build the data, the brand, loyalty,” Rogers said. It worked. When Mill began talks with Whole Foods, many of its team members were already using the product at home. "It’s actually kind of our enterprise sales strategy,” Rogers continued. “We say, ‘Hey, try Mill at home, see what your family thinks.’ It is a surefire way of getting folks excited.”

The AI Edge That Sealed the Deal

What truly cemented the partnership was Mill's AI capability. The startup has developed an AI that uses sensors to determine whether food entering the bin should have still been on the shelf, helping grocers minimize "shrink"—the industry term for lost sales from waste or theft. Rogers noted that advances in large language models (LLMs) were key. At Nest, it took dozens of engineers and a “Google budget” more than a year to train cameras to recognize people. With new LLMs, Mill needed only a handful of engineers and far less time to deliver superior results. According to Rogers, “AI is a huge enabler.”

This tech-driven diversification is strategic. Rogers recalled his time at Apple during the iPod era, when the device accounted for 70% of revenue. Steve Jobs pushed hard for the iPhone out of fear that smartphones would cannibalize the iPod business. Mill is following that playbook, already working on a municipal business to add another "leg to the stool."