In the context of the food supply chain, the UN sustainable goals of 2030 aim at reducing food wastage by fifty percent. Developed countries have started taking steps, but there is little or no sign of progress toward reaching the goal for emerging economies. One such sustainable approach is incorporating circular practices in the food supply chain. A total of 15 barriers to the closed-loop food supply chain were identified through extensive literature review and expert opinions. Further ranking of barriers was done, and a causal relationship among them was built using the Grey DEMATEL methodology. It was found that traceability issues, limited expertise in information and technology, poor logistic network design, and high installation and operational cost of updated facilities were the most influential factors. Sensitivity analysis was also performed to check the robustness of the framework. This study will assist managers in forming the policies and looking after the factors ranked higher. While modeling the framework for their company, they can implement the changes to overcome the challenges of closing the loop. It will also help government regulations in setting regulations for the organization with the aim of encouraging clean practices., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.)