Community colleges are scaling food recovery programs as a student success intervention aimed at reducing hunger and improving persistence to graduation. The article reports that these efforts are expanding at two-year institutions to translate surplus food into regular support for students who are struggling to meet basic needs. The approach is part of a broader student-support strategy that treats food access as a driver of academic attendance and course completion. By linking operational food recovery models to retention outcomes, colleges are attempting to address one of the most immediate barriers to persistence—food insecurity—through partnerships, logistics, and campus-facing distribution. For institutional leaders, the key change is the positioning of food recovery as more than charity: it is being operationalized as infrastructure for retention and completion. The focus is on keeping students enrolled long enough to earn credentials, not only on one-time relief.