Too Good To Go – The app that fights food waste
Source：Too Good To Go, The New York Times, NPR, Forbes
From：Taiwan Trade Center, New York
Update Time：2024/02/20
The app Too Good To Go, founded in 2016 in Copenhagen, saves more than 100,000 meals every day. Created to fight food waste, the app is available in Europe (the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, The Netherlands, Austria, and Norway) and North America (Canada and the USA). The concept is simple: the app connects customers to nearby restaurants, bakeries, and supermarkets with unsold food. This presents a win-win-win solution in which consumers get great food at 1/3 of the original price, store owners no longer throw away their surplus, and we, collectively, help the planet by minimizing waste.
Since launching in the United States in 2020, Too Good To Go has saved over 5.5 million meals from a network of more than 11,000 partners across 17 cities, leading to $50.1M in savings for consumers so far. This is a very good start for a country where 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food is wasted every year. The company is now trying to deploy a national strategy that is facing a bit of a dilemma: to be sustainable, it requires the participation of large companies, such as supermarket chains, but also needs a nationwide presence to demonstrate its viability.
How does the app work? First, download the app (it’s free). Then, browse restaurants and shops near you that offer “Surprise Bags” of food. Reserve the “Surprise Bag” of your choice (note that you cannot choose the content of it), confirm your purchase (a bag usually costs anywhere from $3.99 to $15.99), and go to the shop at the given pick-up time to collect your order.
How does this benefit the stores? While making a positive impact on the environment by reducing their food waste, businesses earn back money on stock that would have been thrown away. Additionally, according to the stats provided by Too Good To Go, 76% of customers who discover a store via the platform end up becoming regular, full-paying customers. Registration is free, but once a business starts to sell food through the app, Too Good To Go will deduct an annual fee of $89 along with a small commission for each “Surprise Bag” sold (which is contingent on the price set for the bag). And, every quarter, the participating store will receive the money earned from Too Good To Go.
Comparable apps are emerging around the world. In North America, Flashfood is an alternative to Too Good To Go. In Singapore, treatsure offers leftovers from hotel buffets and just started partnering with supermarkets. In Hong Kong, Phenix sells from bakeries, coffee shops, and fast-food restaurants. Tabete operates with a similar approach in Japan.
Food waste experts are optimistic about apps designed to reduce food waste by selling surplus items from restaurants and grocery stores. These apps fill a unique niche by selling small volumes of perishable goods, as food banks generally handle larger donations. Additionally, some of these platforms, such as Flashfood, aim to reach people facing food insecurity and are currently working to accept government assistance cards as payment methods.
However, one issue to raise is that some items sold on these apps aren't necessarily considered as food waste. Even though the goal is not to generate profit, some businesses use these platforms for promotional purposes or to sell discontinued products. But despite these challenges, this new business model still appears as a good way to raise awareness about food waste and encourage users to reconsider their own food waste habits.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/climate/food-waste-app.html